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God & Faith

331 articles from the existing collection.

God & Faith1 min read

I don’t see how the fact that your Church has stood for so long proves its truth. Other religions have stood longer, and have perished.

The mere fact that the Catholic Church has stood for so long does not prove its truth. The fact considered in the light of her teachings, moral obligations, and obstacles does. Indefectibility can be claimed as a proof for the Catholic Church alone. She demands humility, mortification, rigid duty, and subjection to God— things h…

God & Faith1 min read

Should not the children be of the mother’s faith?

No. The children must be brought up in the Catholic faith, whether it be the faith of the husband or of the wife. A religion is not true because it is the religion of the wife. If so, then when the wife is Anglican, Anglicanism would be true; when a Christian Scientist, Christian Science would be true; when Catholic, Catholicism…

God & Faith1 min read

Are not Catholics taught that the economic distress of the world is caused by supernatural influences, and that they must simply endure it?

No. Catholics have been urged over and over again by their Church to do their utmost towards the rehabilitation of the world. They do believe in God and in God’s providence. They believe that all the miseries of this world have been permitted by God, or they would not exist. But they are due to man’s own political and economic m…

God & Faith1 min read

In the name of Catholicity you often point out that your Church exceeds all others numerically. But that only disproves your case. Christ said that He scarcely expected to find faith on earth.

Christ said that His Church would teach all nations, and go to the uttermost parts of the earth, the tiniest of seeds growing into a great tree. His words, “When the Son of man cometh, shall He find, think you, faith upon earth?” refer not so much to numbers as to quality of belief, as the context shows. And He is referring to s…

God & Faith1 min read

Is your God interested in propounding conundrums?

He is interested in telling men the truth, and in asking them to pay Him the homage of their reason by the acceptance of that truth, thus acknowledging His infinite wisdom and veracity. Reasonable men know that the truth concerning the nature and operations of an infinite Being will baffle a finite mind to some extent. But they …

God & Faith1 min read

There is only one sacrifice for Christians—that of Calvary,

The Sacrifice of Calvary was a Sacrifice not only for Christians but for the whole human race from the moment of the first sin. But whilst the death of Christ upon the Cross was the one great absolute Sacrifice, the Mass is a true and relative Sacrifice applying to the souls of men the fruits of Calvary. Anyway the doctrine whic…

God & Faith1 min read

Does God create every soul now in a state of sin?

No. God’s creative activity terminates in good only. But the soul cannot normally be infused into a child of Adam without its contracting the privation of the original gratuitous gifts it was destined to receive had Adam not fallen. I say normally because God did anticipate the merits of Christ in one case, preventing the soul o…

God & Faith1 min read

We Protestants believe that Christian doctrine was kept pure as long as the Apostles lived, hut after their deaths, errors crept in.

You err both in fact and in doctrine. In fact, for the Apostles complained of errors, not of the Church, but of individual professing Christians even in their own days. In doctrine, because you practically assert that Christ failed to preserve His Church; that the Holy Spirit did not remain with her; and that the gates of hell d…

God & Faith1 min read

Does not Christian Science rely upon prayer through belief in Christ’s words, “Whatever you ask in My name, it shall be granted”?

I am afraid that it requires more belief in Mrs. Eddy than in Christ It relies also far more upon auto-suggestion and self-persuasion than upon prayer. After all, favors must be asked in the Name of Christ, and therefore in conformity with the Will of God. But God expects us to use the natural means He has put at our disposal. H…

God & Faith2 min read

The idea of the Trinity was derived from ancient Egyptian mythology. The Oracle of Serapis used to reply, “First God, Oxen the Word, and with them the Holy Spirit. All these are of the same nature and make but one whole, of which the power is eternal.”

Your only reason for attempting to derive the doctrine from Egyptian mythology is that you do not wish to admit that it is from God. The Egyptians derived their religious notions from their own every-day life. They had a multiplicity of gods, a god for every locality, each associated with some animal as a symbol Later the idea g…

God & Faith1 min read

Has a child of seven sufficient reason?

As a rule, yes. The law of the Church to receive Holy Communion once a year obliges all Catholics who have come to the use of reason, and this law begins to oblige from about the age of seven. The average child of seven certainly has enough sense to realize that the reception of the Holy Eucharist is a religious act. It can know…

God & Faith1 min read

Should not a man be ruled by his own opinions?

Not where it is a question of the religion revealed by God. To decide what one will believe or not believe for oneself is faith in one’s own ability, but not faith in Christ. Christian faith believes what Christ taught and because Christ taught it, without reference to one’s own likes or dislikes.

KNOWLEDGE SHARED. FAITH STRENGTHENED.

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