What do I need to learn to be truly Catholic?

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Hi all,

I’ve had a lot of newbie posts lately. That’s because I am a newbie. I recently came back to the Church after a ten year absence or so (I was confirmed before I left, and have been to confession since then numerous times and my priest said I was “okay to go” [paraphrasing])

I have been reading and reading and reading but a lot of things confuse me. I was hoping someone here could put a merciful touch to an explanation for me, and ‘break things down’ a little.

Is everything I need rolled into the CCC? I’m also reading a Catholic study bible; though it’s not my first reading of the Bible, it is the first Catholic study.

Is everything in the CCC considered infallible? I was bewildered when I learned that Vatican II was not fallible, because I thought all documents and declarations and such were. I just want to know everything that’s necessarily true in the Church’s eyes so I don’t go around either a) spouting heresy or b) saying something is true when it’s really only opinion.

I’ve really been trying to learn this on my own but it’s too much; can someone help me understand? :blessyou:
 
Why not check with a local Rectory and find out when they have religious instruction classes for non-Catholics looking to convert. You could arrange to sit in on these classes as sort of a “refresher course”. Now that you are a mature adult, you would gain much more from these classes than you did from your original instruction.
If at all possible, try to locate a Dominican or Jesuit School or Parish for these classes! Believe me, you won’t regret it!!! When they are through with you, you will be able to debate a Southern Baptist or Jehovah’s Witness and win! LOL
 
SighGuy said:
Hi all,

I’ve had a lot of newbie posts lately. That’s because I am a newbie. I recently came back to the Church after a ten year absence or so (I was confirmed before I left, and have been to confession since then numerous times and my priest said I was “okay to go” [paraphrasing])

I have been reading and reading and reading but a lot of things confuse me. I was hoping someone here could put a merciful touch to an explanation for me, and ‘break things down’ a little.

Is everything I need rolled into the CCC? I’m also reading a Catholic study bible; though it’s not my first reading of the Bible, it is the first Catholic study.

Is everything in the CCC considered infallible? I was bewildered when I learned that Vatican II was not fallible, because I thought all documents and declarations and such were. I just want to know everything that’s necessarily true in the Church’s eyes so I don’t go around either a) spouting heresy or b) saying something is true when it’s really only opinion.

I’ve really been trying to learn this on my own but it’s too much; can someone help me understand? :blessyou:
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Do you mean to say “Vatican II was not infallible”?
 
I hope not to confuse you further. :o

I think getting hung up on which Church teachings are exactly infallible is not the best approach to studying Church teaching. We are called to assent to it all.

The Catechism is a compendium of Catholic teaching. The weight of each teaching contained therein is based on where the teaching comes from, not from the fact that it is in the Catechism. That said, you would certainly be just fine reading it and accepting it all. Just because something has not been dogmatically and infallibly defined does not mean it’s not true.
 
As a general rule, you may consider the teachings on faith and morals contained in the catechism as infallible teachings. I think you might benefit from a copy of Catholicism for Dummies. It is an excellent, easily read and understood guide to the beliefs of the Catholic faith. It is broken down by subject matter and you may rely on it for years to come. I learn something each time I read my copy.
 
vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P66.HTM

CCC

Faith

1814 Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself. By faith "man freely commits his entire self to God."78 For this reason the believer seeks to know and do God’s will. “The righteous shall live by faith.” Living faith "work(s) through charity."79

Hope

1817 Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit…

1820…Hope is expressed and nourished in prayer, especially in the Our Father, the summary of everything that hope leads us to desire.

Charity

1822 Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God.

1827 The practice of all the virtues is animated and inspired by charity, which “binds everything together in perfect harmony”;105 it is the form of the virtues; it articulates and orders them among themselves; it is the source and the goal of their Christian practice. Charity upholds and purifies our human ability to love, and raises it to the supernatural perfection of divine love.

LUMEN GENTIUM

40…all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity
 
Reading and study are beneficial to the intellect, but what of the spirit? Time spent before our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament at adoration is the spiritual cure. CAUTION: It will become a habit!
 
Yes, basically everything you need is rolled into the CCC, but it may not be the easiest thing to understand either because of its verbosity (in some cases) or its lack of basic explanation (in other cases).
 
Guess we can’t ever know it all. Follow your heart, it will tell what you should do.
 
I would say living the Gospel.Getting to know and love Jesus by slowly reading the Gospel.
Go to Mass,listen.Go to Confession,be humble.Adoration as somebody else recommended. Serve in silence in little things.We will never know it all,but we can try and love God above all things,find God in all things,and love our neighbour as we love ourselves.Pray and ask Mary for help.
May God bless you.
 
Get yourself a copy of the book *This Is the Faith. *It is uniformly excellent and easy reading and should be complete enough for you or anyone else, for that matter. You will not want to close it after you start reading, guaranteed. 👍

Oh yeah … and pray. Pray.
 
Well - first of all, I can’t say what you need to learn since we don’t know your current level of knowledge. 🤷 So that being said…we can only offer some general guidelines.

Fundamentally, one needs to ground themselves firmly in agape love…sometimes called “brotherly love”. In the Gospels we are told that agape love is the root and core of all of the law and the prophets (Mt 22:36-40), and it is my our love that the world will know we are followers of Christ (John 13:34-35). This grounding begins with our repentance and our desire to change - to become a new man - and a child of the living God.
Everything else that we understand and that we do must be built upon this foundation - or we wind up like the scribes and pharisees quibbling over rules and neglecting mercy…straining the gnat and swallowing the camel.

Now - recognizing and embracing that foundational position - we seek to conform our lives through sound teaching, prayer, discipline, and participation in the sacraments.

For sound teaching we have the Catechism and many many many books and documents. Frankly no one can really absorb them all…but the Catechism is certainly the best summary and touchstone for the Catholic as they move forward.

Prayer - must be a central component of your life. By this I don’t simply mean prayer in a formal sense of setting aside certain times for formal recitation of prayer. Rather, one needs to develop an “attitude of prayer” throughout the day - a disposition whereby everything we do is done for God. In this disposition, God comes to mind often and when He does, we make a quiet recognition, a quick prayer of thanksgiving, an acknowledgement of our blessings or whatever…

Discipline - is the tool by which we draw ourselves (by the grace of God) ever more fully into conformity with Christ. This discipline is generally like diet and exercise, it doesn’t happen overnight, nor does it happen without hitches failures, backsliding and recommitting.
In this the various rules of the Church (which all stem from that fundamental principle of Love) are a tremendous help. Whenever we have a question or a concern we can find guidance within the Church’s teachings.

Finally, participation in the Sacraments is the great binder of the above. In particular, Mass and confession are prayerful disciplines that draw us nearer to Christ, bring our faults to mind as well as our strengths, offer us guidance and most importantly they are tremendous avenues of grace.

Of course, I have not told you what you need to learn…because as I already said…I cannot. What I have described to you is the attitude and the focus that we ALL need to embrace as we move forward.
Being Catholic - being a disciple of Christ - is not about knowing and following rules. “Rules following” is an OT outlook that is so difficult as to be impossible.
Rather following Christ is about love and loving. It is about conforming ourselves to Christ to the best of our ability in humble obedience to His will as manifested through the Church.
By embracing this attitude of prayer, discipline, sound teaching and participation in the sacraments, you will find (as I did) that the Holy Spirit will lead you to that which you need to learn and at the proper time that you need to learn it.

I hope that some of this is of help to you.

Peace
James
 
JRKH said:
Of course, I have not told you what you need to learn…because as I already said…I cannot. What I have described to you is the attitude and the focus that we ALL need to embrace as we move forward.
Being Catholic - being a disciple of Christ - is not about knowing and following rules. “Rules following” is an OT outlook that is so difficult as to be impossible.
Rather following Christ is about love and loving. It is about conforming ourselves to Christ to the best of our ability in humble obedience to His will as manifested through the Church.
By embracing this attitude of prayer, discipline, sound teaching and participation in the sacraments, you will find (as I did) that the Holy Spirit will lead you to that which you need to learn and at the proper time that you need to learn it.

I hope that some of this is of help to you.

Peace
James
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Well said. The passage I read this morning contains this advice from Jesus himself:
34I give you a new commandment:* love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.t 35This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
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As James said above, this is the foundation for all that we learn and do. It requires an openness to life-long, constant conversion. It is good to learn what to believe, but needs to be in the context of conforming our lives to Christ.
 
Thanks for the great advice everyone. I will try to remember not to get so caught up into studying and rules that I forget to have mercy on others and to show love to others. And I will take the reading and other recommendations seriously as well.

It is good to know that with regards to what’s considered infallible, doesn’t mean that anything not considered as such is something that’s not important to uphold as well.
(And whoops-- that was a typo with regards to the fallible/infallible thing in my first post)
 
SighGuy said:
Thanks for the great advice everyone. I will try to remember not to get so caught up into studying and rules that I forget to have mercy on others and to show love to others. And I will take the reading and other recommendations seriously as well.

It is good to know that with regards to what’s considered infallible, doesn’t mean that anything not considered as such is something that’s not important to uphold as well.
(And whoops-- that was a typo with regards to the fallible/infallible thing in my first post)
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👍

Just remember that this is a journey toward holiness…a journey toward God…and you will be “truly Catholic”.

Peace
James
 
SighGuy said:
I’ve really been trying to learn this on my own but it’s too much; can someone help me understand?
Click to expand...
When I went through RCIA, my wife who is a life-long Catholic, attended with me. She said that she really learned a lot by attending with me.

My class was given course books, and the CCC. The instructors covered it all pretty well, including our parish priest.

Also, we had some who were already confirmed that were attending as a “refresher” due to long absence.

Perhaps this might be a good course for you?
 
Michael57 said:
When I went through RCIA, my wife who is a life-long Catholic, attended with me. She said that she really learned a lot by attending with me.

My class was given course books, and the CCC. The instructors covered it all pretty well, including our parish priest.

Also, we had some who were already confirmed that were attending as a “refresher” due to long absence.

Perhaps this might be a good course for you?
Click to expand...
Great idea. 2 of our candidates had Catholic spouses present for most of the program this last year. We also had neophytes from the previous year participate as sponsors and give witness talks. The RCIA process takes the candidates and the whole team through a lot of learning. We give everyone a catechism as well as a ream of reading materials related to particular doctrines. But the foundation and catalyst for the learning is the witness of the candidates, sponsors, and team members. Catechesis has to be real. It is very helpful for a person to hear the experiences and faith journey of others. For example, the priest can explain the Eucharist very effectively, but a person may not see the light until another person says it in a way he/she can relate to. Different people have different ways of explaining the same thing. It is amazing to see a candidate finally see the light. The USCCB makes it very clear that RCIA is not merely a program of learning, it is a process that invites a person to conversion with others.
 
Keep in simple. I would recommend an good Catholic Study Bible. I use the Ignatius Study Bible (Curtis Mitch and Scott Hahn) and Prayerfully read the Catechism. Whether we are newbies or oldies it is a life-long process.
 
Thanks for the advice. 🙂 I’m currently in “exile” but I am eager to look into RCIA once I am back in my home. I have been very eager to get involved in local community things also, from which I hope I can learn a bit.
 
SighGuy said:
Hi all,

I’ve had a lot of newbie posts lately. That’s because I am a newbie. I recently came back to the Church after a ten year absence or so (I was confirmed before I left, and have been to confession since then numerous times and my priest said I was “okay to go” [paraphrasing])

I have been reading and reading and reading but a lot of things confuse me. I was hoping someone here could put a merciful touch to an explanation for me, and ‘break things down’ a little.

Is everything I need rolled into the CCC? I’m also reading a Catholic study bible; though it’s not my first reading of the Bible, it is the first Catholic study.

Is everything in the CCC considered infallible? I was bewildered when I learned that Vatican II was not fallible, because I thought all documents and declarations and such were. I just want to know everything that’s necessarily true in the Church’s eyes so I don’t go around either a) spouting heresy or b) saying something is true when it’s really only opinion.

I’ve really been trying to learn this on my own but it’s too much; can someone help me understand? :blessyou:
Click to expand...
The teachings of the Church are not all infallible, but the church is protected by the Holy spirit from teaching sinful error.

That is, if you learn and obey the CCC, and the commandments and the gospels, even if the CCC is later changed, you will not have sinned, even if violating the later version.

The Church taught Limbo for 200 years - it’s no sin to believe in Limbo nor to have taught it in the past - but the church now says limbo should not be taught, and so now those who actively teach it in the name of the church sin.

The infallible teachings are far fewer: the Divinity of Christ; the physical incarnation of Christ; the Trinity; that posthumous purgation exists and is assisted by prayers of the living; that saints can and do intercede on our behalf; that Christ ascended into heaven, that Mary was taken up both body and soul, and her physical body perfected; that we will have perfected bodies in the end of time as part of the general resurrection; that the bread and wine become the body and blood of christ (even tho they retain the appearance of bread and wine); that the pope is the successor of Peter and thus prince of the apostles; that the 7 sacraments are all of divine institution (even if not all are documented explicitly in the bible); that the authentic source of teaching is the combination of the Bishops as a whole, sacred tradition, and sacred scripture; that salvation is not just for the jews, but also the gentiles; the Bible is true;

Most of these are in the Creed. I may have missed a few.
 
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