In paragraph #29 of Pope John Paul II’s encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, he talks about man having the capacity to accomplish the truth of promoting all human life. To accomplish this truth, the Catholic Intellectual plays a vital role. Though, for an Intellectual to successfully contribute, they must understand our Christology, follow the teaching of Jesus Christ, participate in the seamless and common vision, and fulfill all of this through their vocation.
Patrick Strycharz
3/17/14
Rough Draft
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the Catholic Church
The modern Catholic Church has been through significant highs and lows in the past sixty years. Evangelization has been tougher then ever because scandal after scandal has plagued the Church and in consequence the priesthood is unattractive and the drop in membership is too significant. The Church is not a political party and the Pope is not the President so the expectations of corrupt politicians is not placed on the clergy. Looking back at the greatest meeting of all time, Vatican II, the Church gathered a corpus of theologians, officials, and experts in other fields to make a great change in how the clergy would go about and christify or exclaim the message of Christ to the world.
Christianity is considered to be a living religion especially in terms of the reach for salvation. In the present through the practice of Baptism, Christians believe they die to the life of Original Sin and are born again to Christ, thus able to achieve Salvation. Thus, the tradition and sacred ritual of baptism implies that in order to be active adherents in the Catholic church, one must be baptised, just as Jesus was in the New Testament, “Peter said to them, Repent, and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ.” (Acts 2:38) Another way in which baptism demonstrate that Christianity is a living religious tradition, is through the teachings associated with the purpose of human existence. Through the act of Baptism, which is a direct display of the belief in Salvation through Jesus, the purpose of human life is presented in terms of adherent’s purpose to lov...
Lynn Malone, is currently the senior pastor at First United Methodist Church in Monroe, Louisiana. On June 13, 2008, Malone gave a homily that entailed a very key component of the Christian faith, the church. In this homily, the main concept of the homily is the church as being one whole entity. Throughout the homily, numerous examples are given that exemplify this concept. I will be discussing two themes more in depth throughout this paper, the Christian Church as one entity, and the universality of Christianity and Christ’s teachings.
Religion is too rigid and has many definitions with just as many denominations. Each religion has its own set beliefs, as well as its own way to worship. Pope Francis, who was elected as the world’s top religious leader said, “The Church is or should go back to being a community of God’s people, and priests, pastors and bishops, who have the c...
It is impossible to not encounter Christ in one’s life, thus man is faced with the decision to accept or deny Christ. As human reason cannot ask “How?” when concerning Christ, as human reason does not have the capability in understanding anything that is beyond his own being, man is “strained to the limit by the question ‘Who?’” (49). Yet to ask “who” Christ is is a difficulty in itself. Christ, or the divine Logos, reveals himself to man and it is up to the man himself to answer his own question. Who Christ is is who he is to the individual. Yet if one desires to achieve an accurate identity of Christ, one must understand him. In order to understand him, one must “commit…to him in a stark ‘Either-Or’”: either Christ or the world (Bonhoeffer, 43). To commit to Christ is to allow him to take control. It is during this commitment that one learns of the “grace and love of God which [culminated] in the cross” (47). Yet what does it mean to follow Christ? Bonhoeffer stresses the importance of discipleship. Man cannot live by cheap grace, as it is the “grace we bestow on ourselves” (54), and his Christian faith will collapse. Real grace comes with a cost and that is a life to serve Chr...
The first religion that I am going to discuss is Buddhism. Buddhism originated roughly 2,500 years ago in India. The story has it that a young prince, who lived the ideal life, began questioning the most glorious aspects of his life. Such as, why people had to suffer and what were the causes of their suffering. When he began his adventure for answers, he came across four men; a sick man, an old man, a dead man, and a monk. It is said that each man represented a different phase of anguish, including illness, suffering, and death. After his sighting of the monk, the prince realized that he needed to leave the palace in order for deeper answers to life. As he became a wandering holy man, he gained insight of the world and was later named Buddha. After Buddha was titled the “enlightened one”, he discovered the Three Universal Truths and the Four Noble Truths that he then spread to his believers. The Three Universal Truths included: everything in life is always changing, possessing things or people don’t lead to happiness, and there is no eternal, unchanging soul...
For centuries there has been a countless debates regarding do all religions share a common thread and which religion is actually correct? The major commonality of all religions is the pursuit of the truth however each religion has it own understanding of this truth. The interesting fact is each religions believes that there can be only one truth, subsequently, they bash each others ideas and path explaining that they’re belief is the right one. The next question is: which religion actually offers the answer to this truth. To understand this question we must look into two positions: exclusivism and pluralism.
Speaking strictly in terms of salvation, exclusivism is confined to traditional Catholic dogma, “that extra ecclesiam nulla salus, outside the church there is no salvation. (41) Christian inclusivism, however, can take on two different forms. The first form defines salvation by the idea that one must accept Jesus as their personal lord and savior. The other form is much less traditional and states that all salvific influences in other religions are due to the salvific work of Christ. Hicks theory of pluralism is based off of this information. As we move toward the idea that Christ is at work in all of the world religions, there is no longer “an exclusively Christian inclusivism, but a plurality of mutually inclusive inclusivisms which is close to the kind of pluralism that I want to recommend.” (44) Arguing against Bertrand Russell’s idea that if one religion is true the rest must be false, John Hicks provides three different analogies to combat this
Inclusivism, according to Pope Benedict, is “a kind of Christian imperialism, as presumptive in relation to other religions: it is said to be not our business to see other religions as directed toward an end in Christ and, thus, to take them over in a Christian sense.” He believes that inclusivism is commonly prohibited. Inclusivists tend to regard other religions as being conditional. These people try to be faithful both to Jesus Christ’s claim that “no-one comes to the Father but by me” and to the promise that God desires the salvation of all. Pluralism, according to Pope Benedict, is what makes “a clear break with the belief that salvation comes from Christ alone and that his Church belongs to Christ. People in the pluralist position are of the opinion that the plurality of religions is God’s own will and that all of them are paths to salvation, or at least can be so, while an especially important, but by no means