Apologetics: Of Necessity

Adjutorium meum intende. Domine ad adjuvandam me festina.
O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.

My Faith, Catholicism, has been attacked, misunderstood, insulted, persecuted, since its founding by Our Lord, Jesus Christ, in 33 A.D. This won't stop until God wills it toward the conclusion of the end times.   I am challenged so often, not really to explain, but to defend what I believe. Explanations seem futile sometimes.  However, I feel the need to talk about my Faith and tell why it is my Faith, so here goes.

The Old Testament foreshadowed the New. The chosen people of God, the Jews, were promised blessings if they remained faithful. He sent prophets to reveal Himself. He sent laws to make them holy. The All-Knowing God prepared the world for the coming of His Son by the very words of those prophets, particularly Isaiah. He knew His chosen ones would fail, as a race, to recognize the Savior when He came. What was revealed in the Old Testament was fulfilled in the New.

Christ built His Church for all mankind. He preached and made known His precepts. He built the Church through the crucifixion of His Body, His Resurrection, and the sending of the Holy Ghost to empower and give courage to His Apostles. He sent the Apostles to "preach the Gospel to all people, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." Christ is Head of the Church. The Church is His Mystical Body and we are the living members of that Body. We often call the Church the Bride of Christ, waiting for His return. St. Paul says, "for by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body" (1 Cor: 12:13). and then, "Why do we receive the Eucharist: In order that, by sharing the Lord's physical body, we might be raised to fellowship with Him and with one another, 'Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.'" (1 Cor. 10:17). We are many parts of the Body, but we all form the one.

Before the Apostles' time was over there were challenges within the Church and, as we know, plenty of opposition and persecution from without. As it is now, there were people who claimed to be Christians, but did not follow the Gospels' teachings totally. St. Paul knew that we need to believe inwardly all the truths of Faith as prescribed by the Apostles and the successors they ordained to continue their teachings throughout the world. Paul talked of the unity of the Church as a house, and again as a human body. (Eph. 4:3-6).

By the second century there was a major heresy which would test that unity. Gnosticism claimed to have personal insight and ignored the teaching hierarchy of the Church. Yes, there was a hierarchy from Peter, James, and other bishops and their successors from the very beginning. Gnostics claimed that Christ was only human. By 150 A.D. the Church expected converts to memorize the Lord's Prayer and to understand the Creed. They needed to affirm articles of faith, realizing the roles of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the truth of the Church and the resurrection. The Apostles' Creed that we say today traces its source to the last decades of the second century.  This is what we mean by the handing down of the tenets of the Faith from the Apostles, through their successors and down to the present day, and the necessity of obeying those tenets and precepts. Through the centuries various beliefs, held from the earliest days, were set down by popes and synods called to declare, affirm and define, in writing, those beliefs, so they would not be subject to errors which had arisen and heresies that were being promulgated. New beliefs, contrary to what some believe, were never added. At some point I will quote some of the earliest Fathers of the Church on various subjects.

Why do we need to hear, learn and obey the precepts of the Church? We do because authority is needed, as it always has been through the history of mankind, or there is disunity and chaos. We do because Our Lord, Jesus Christ, Himself, gave that authority to the Apostles and those whom they would ordain to follow them and continue their teaching. "Whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall be bound also in heaven." The Church is responsible for explaining the teachings of the Head of the Church, Christ, and of setting rules for the salvation of His members, the faithful. Our hierarchy, from the Apostles onward, charge us to obey the Ten Commandments, and they administer the Sacraments given us by Our Lord. And yes, authority is from the Bible, whose Canon was approved by the Catholic Church as early as 382 A.D. Because the Church is guided by the Holy Ghost, in matters of Faith and Morals it can not be in error.

I will attempt, bit by bit, to explain and defend teachings in more detail, to the best of my ability.
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May 15, 2015