something condemned by the First Commandment). Instead, they are living examples and models of holiness and sanctity. They are role models and heroes of faith who, in their own way, tried and succeeded in following Jesus as best they could.
Following traditions
The most visible aspects of Catholicism are not usually the most fundamental theological, doctrinal, or moral teachings. In other words, they aren’t necessarily the meat-and-potatoes substance of what it means to be Catholic. But some traditions are so public or well known that people associate them with Catholicism much like people associate Judaism with a man wearing a yarmulke or Islam with the use of a prayer rug.
Some such Catholic traditions include meatless Fridays, ashes on the forehead to begin Lent, palms on Passion Sunday, and blessings (of throats, persons, homes, cars, and so on). Such pious practices are not the core of Catholicism, but they do connect and point in that direction, as we explain in Chapter 19.
Chapter 2
Having Faith in God’s Revealed Word
IN THIS CHAPTER
You may think that having faith is similar to believing in fairy tales, UFOs, ghosts, abominable snowmen, the Loch Ness monster, or Bigfoot. But faith is something entirely different. Faith is not the enemy of reason — it is merely above reason. In this chapter, we tell you what faith really is and explain all the divine truths that Catholics believe in. We also sum up some proofs for God’s existence that will make your faith stronger.
How Do You Know If You Have Faith?
St. Thomas Aquinas (theologian of the 13th century) said faith was the assent given by the mind (intellect) to what cannot be seen or proven but is taken on the word and authority of another. The ascertainment of faith is plain and simple: You have faith if you trust the word of someone else. When you take what someone says on faith, you believe in what the other person is telling you even though you haven’t personally witnessed it, may not understand it, or may find it difficult to believe. In other words, faith means agreeing with, believing in, trusting something — without cold, hard evidence — that you can’t know or comprehend on your own.
So far, faith doesn’t sound all that different from believing in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, but having faith is a bit more complicated. Having faith means being able to live with unanswered questions — sometimes, tough ones. For example, why does evil exist in the world? Why do people still go to war? And what about the existence of terrorism, disease, and crime? Faith doesn’t answer all these questions. (Some people think that the answer “It’s God’s will” suffices, but it doesn’t.) Faith, however, gives you the strength and ability to endure unanswerable questions. Instead of providing a set of solutions to painful and complicated enigmas, faith provides the means to persevere.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, a book defining the official teachings of the Catholic Church, has this to say about faith:
“Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed.” (150)
“Faith is a personal act — the free response of the human person to the initiative of God who reveals himself. But faith isn’t an isolated act. No one can believe alone, just as no one can live alone.” (166)
Having Faith in Revelation
Catholic faith involves more than just believing that God exists. It’s about believing in God as well as whatever God has revealed. Objectively, you can look at faith as the sum total of the truths God reveals, which form the basis for the doctrines of the Church and are often called the deposit of faith — the doctrines of the Church. Subjectively, you can consider faith as your personal response (assent) to those revealed truths.
We hear ya: “But what do you mean by revealed truths? And, for that matter, just what are God’s revealed truths?” By revealed truths, we mean revelations, God’s unveiling of supernatural truths necessary for human salvation. (The word revelation comes from the Latin revelare, meaning “to unveil.”) Some of these are truths that you could never know by science or philosophy; the human mind is incapable of knowing them without divine intervention, so God revealed them to mere mortals. For example, the revealed truth of the Holy Trinity is that there is only one God but three persons (not three gods, mind you). This truth is something that the human intellect could never discover on its own; God had to tell that one Himself.
Other revelations, such as the existence of God, can be known by using human reason alone (see the later section “Backing Up Your Faith with Reason: Summa Theologica”), but God reveals these truths directly anyway because not everyone understands them at the same time and in the same way. The essence of these revelations can be — and is presumed to be — knowable to anyone with the use of reason; so, for example, someone can’t claim he didn’t know it was wrong to commit murder. But because of original sin (see Chapter 8), some of the applications and distinctions of these basic truths require more reasoning and thinking. To even out the playing field, God revealed some important truths so that even those people who aren’t intelligent or quick-minded won’t be caught off guard.
The written word: Known also as Scripture or the Bible
The spoken word: Also called the unwritten word or Sacred Tradition
Both the
