What is the church?

[walter]

If baptism is the entrance into the body of Christ which is the church then why are not protestants in the church.
I am aware of the fact that they believe in an invisible church whereas we believe in a visible one.
In other words what is it then that makes a catholic a catholic.
Is it confirmation.
Someone may say that it is a matter of what you believe but may catholics don’t seem to believe in the teachings of the church.
So do protestants belong to the visible church even if they don’t believe that it is visible.

 

[John_Lilburne]

When a baptised protestant becomes a Catholic the ceremony is called “Reception of Baptized Christians into the Full Communion of the Catholic Church”. Their baptism is recognised.

 

[puzzleannie]

Non-Catholic Christians who have been baptised by immersion or pouring of water and the Trinitarian formula are members of the Church, but they are not in full communion with the Church. Their individual beliefs about that status may differ, but the reality of the sacrament does not change and the sacrament of baptism always effects what it signifies.

 

[cue]

If baptism is the entrance into the body of Christ which is the church then why are not protestants in the church.
I am aware of the fact that they believe in an invisible church whereas we believe in a visible one.
In other words what is it then that makes a catholic a catholic.
Is it confirmation.
Someone may say that it is a matter of what you believe but may catholics don’t seem to believe in the teachings of the church.
So do protestants belong to the visible church even if they don’t believe that it is visible.

Here is a quote from Lumen Gentium:

Incorporated in the Church through baptism, the faithful are destined by the baptismal character for the worship of the Christian religion; reborn as sons of God they must confess before men the faith which they have received from God through the Church. They are more perfectly bound to the Church by the sacrament of Confirmation, and the Holy Spirit endows them with special strength so that they are more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith, both by word and by deed, as true witnesses of Christ. Taking part in the eucharistic sacrifice, which is the fount and apex of the whole Christian life, they offer the Divine Victim to God, and offer themselves along with It. Thus both by reason of the offering and through Holy Communion all take part in this liturgical service, not indeed, all in the same way but each in that way which is proper to himself. Strengthened in Holy Communion by the Body of Christ, they then manifest in a concrete way that unity of the people of God which is suitably signified and wondrously brought about by this most august sacrament.

So Baptism ‘incorporates’ us into the Body of Christ, the Church. Our Baptism then calls us to live as faithful sons of God, which means obedience to the Church (believing as she believes). These promises and bonds are perfected in Confirmation. The Mass, though, is the “fount and apex” of Christian life, and so is that which really makes “a Catholic a Catholic.”