Teach Mormons about Catholicism (Home)
Table of Contents:
1. Prophets of God 7. Man
13. The Restoration
19. Baptism
2. One God 8. The Image of God
14. Tradition
20. Confirmation
3. Jesus Christ
9. The Fall of Adam
15. Catholic
21. Marriage
4. The Holy Spirit 10. Original Sin
16. The Church
22. Purgatory
5. The Holy Trinity 11. Faith and Grace
17. Apostle
23. Heaven and Hell
6. The Creation 12. Authority
18. The Priesthood
24. Eternal Life
11. Faith and Grace
Mormonism:
It is up to each of us to do our
part and become worthy of exaltation. (GP
Chapter 3)
Catholicism:
- No One Can Merit the Initial Grace of Forgiveness and Justification
- Man's Merit is Due to God’s Grace and Secondly
to Man's Collaboration
- Grace is the Free and Underserved Help That God Gives Us
- Faith Consists Of Disposing The Heart To Do The Will Of The Father
- Faith Seeks Understanding, Truth Can Never Contradict Truth
- The Holy Spirit Gives Us Spiritual Understanding
- The Way of Perfection Passes By Way of the Cross
- Persevere in the Faith Until the End
- Mortal Sin Destroys Charity In The Heart
of Man
No one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity, we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification, for the increase of grace and charity, and for the attainment of eternal life (CCC2010). Justification has been merited for us by the Passion of Christ who offered himself on the cross as a living victim, holy and pleasing to God, and whose blood has become the instrument of atonement for the sins of all men. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith (CCC1992).
Justification establishes cooperation between God's grace and man's freedom. On man's part it is expressed by the assent of faith to the Word of God, which invites him to conversion, and in the cooperation of charity with the prompting of the Holy Spirit who precedes and preserves his assent: When God touches man's heart through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, man himself is not inactive while receiving that inspiration, since he could reject it; and yet, without God's grace, he cannot by his own free will move himself toward justice in God's sight (CCC1993).
In the waters of Baptism, we have been "washed... sanctified ... justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God." [2 Cor 6:11] Our Father calls us to holiness in the whole of our life, and since "he is the source of [our] life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and... sanctification," [1 Cor 1:30; cf. 1 Thess 4:7] both his glory and our life depend on the hallowing of his name in us and by us. Such is the urgency of our first petition. By whom is God hallowed, since he is the one who hallows? But since he said, "You shall be holy to me; for I the LORD am holy," we seek and ask that we who were sanctified in Baptism may persevere in what we have begun to be. And we ask this daily, for we need sanctification daily, so that we who fail daily may cleanse away our sins by being sanctified continually.... We pray that this sanctification may remain in us. (CCC2813).
We can have merit in God's sight only because of God's free plan to associate man with the work of his grace. Merit is to be ascribed in the first place to the grace of God, and secondly to man's collaboration. Man's merit is due to God (CCC2025). Man's merit, moreover, itself is due to God, for his good actions proceed in Christ, from the predispositions and assistance given by the Holy Spirit (CCC2008). God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes: "For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" [Phil 2:13; 1Cor 12:6] (CCC308). The merits of our good works are gifts of the divine goodness. Grace has gone before us; now we are given what is due.... Our merits are God's gifts (CCC2009).
By this power of the Spirit, God's children can bear much fruit. He who has grafted us onto the true vine will make us bear "the fruit of the Spirit:... love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" [Gal 5:22-23]. "We live by the Spirit"; the more we renounce ourselves, the more we "walk by the Spirit" [Gal 5:25; Mt 16:24-26]. Through the Holy Spirit we are restored to paradise, led back to the Kingdom of heaven, and adopted as children, given confidence to call God "Father" and to share in Christ's grace, called children of light and given a share in eternal glory (CCC736). "Lead us not into temptation" implies a decision of the heart: "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.... No one can serve two masters" [Mt 6:21, 24]. "If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit" [Gal 5:25]. In this assent to the Holy Spirit the Father gives us strength. "No testing has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, so that you may be able to endure it" [1 Cor 10:13] (CCC2848).
Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life [Jn 1:12-18; 17:3; Rom 8:14-17; 2Pet 1:3-4] (CCC1996). For it is by grace that we are saved and again it is by grace that our works can bear fruit for eternal life (CCC1697). The first work of the grace of the Holy Spirit is conversion, effecting justification in accordance with Jesus' proclamation at the beginning of the Gospel: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" [Mt 4:17]. Moved by grace, man turns toward God and away from sin, thus accepting forgiveness and righteousness from on high. Justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man (CCC1989).
The preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace. This latter is needed to arouse and sustain our collaboration in justification through faith, and in sanctification through charity. God brings to completion in us what he has begun, since he who completes his work by cooperating with our will began by working so that we might will it. Indeed we also work, but we are only collaborating with God who works, for his mercy has gone before us. It has gone before us so that we may be healed, and follows us so that once healed, we may be given life; it goes before us so that we may be called, and follows us so that we may be glorified; it goes before us so that we may live devoutly, and follows us so that we may always live with God: for without him we can do nothing (CCC2001).
Since it belongs to the supernatural order, grace escapes our experience and cannot be known except by faith. We cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we are justified and saved. However, according to the Lord's words "Thus you will know them by their fruits" [Mt 7:20] - reflection on God's blessings in our life and in the lives of the saints offers us a guarantee that grace is at work in us and spurs us on to an ever greater faith and an attitude of trustful poverty. A pleasing illustration of this attitude is found in the reply of St. Joan of Arc to a question posed as a trap by her ecclesiastical judges: Asked if she knew that she was in God's grace, she replied: "If I am not, may it please God to put me in it; if I am, may it please God to keep me there" (CCC2005).
Faith consists not only in saying "Lord, Lord," but in disposing the heart to do the will of the Father [Mt 7:21]. Jesus calls his disciples to bring into their prayer this concern for cooperating with the divine plan [Mt 9:38; Lk 10:2; Jn 4:34] (CCC2611). By prayer we can discern what is the will of God and obtain the endurance to do it [Rom 12:2; Eph 5:17; Heb 10:36]. Jesus teaches us that one enters the kingdom of heaven not by speaking words, but by doing "the will of my Father in heaven" [Mt 7:21] (CCC2826). Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself. By faith man freely commits his entire self to God. For this reason the believer seeks to know and do God's will. "The righteous shall live by faith." Living faith "work[s] through charity" [Rom 1:17; Gal 5:6] (CCC1814).
Faith is a supernatural gift from God. In order to believe, man needs the interior helps of the Holy Spirit. (CCC179). When St. Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus declared to him that this revelation did not come "from flesh and blood", but from "my Father who is in heaven" [Mt 16:17; Gal 1:15; Mt 11:25]. Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him. Before this faith can be exercised, man must have the grace of God to move and assist him; he must have the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the eyes of the mind and makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth (CCC153). Faith is necessary for salvation. The Lord himself affirms: "He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned" (Mk 16:16) (CCC183).
In faith, the human intellect and will co-operate with divine grace: Believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace (CCC155). What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason: we believe because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. So that the submission of our faith might nevertheless be in accordance with reason, God willed that external proofs of his Revelation should be joined to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit (CCC156).
Faith is certain. It is more certain than all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie. To be sure, revealed truths can seem obscure to human reason and experience, but the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives. Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt (CCC157). Faith seeks understanding: it is intrinsic to faith that a believer desires to know better the One in whom he has put his faith, and to understand better what He has revealed; a more penetrating knowledge will in turn call forth a greater faith, increasingly set afire by love. The grace of faith opens "the eyes of your hearts" [Eph 1:18] to a lively understanding of the contents of Revelation: that is, of the totality of God's plan and the mysteries of faith, of their connection with each other and with Christ, the centre of the revealed mystery. The same Holy Spirit constantly perfects faith by his gifts, so that Revelation may be more and more profoundly understood. In the words of St. Augustine, "I believe, in order to understand; and I understand, the better to believe" (CCC158).
Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth. Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are (CCC159).
The Holy Spirit gives a spiritual understanding of the Word of God to those who read or hear it, according to the dispositions of their hearts. By means of the words, actions, and symbols that form the structure of a celebration, the Spirit puts both the faithful and the ministers into a living relationship with Christ, the Word and Image of the Father, so that they can live out the meaning of what they hear, contemplate, and do in the celebration (CCC1101). Thanks to the assistance of the Holy Spirit, the understanding of both the realities and the words of the heritage of faith is able to grow in the life of the Church: "through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these things in their hearts"; [Lk 2:19, 51] it is in particular theological research [which] deepens knowledge of revealed truth, from the intimate sense of spiritual realities which [believers] experience, the sacred Scriptures grow with the one who reads them, from the preaching of those who have received, along with their right of succession in the episcopate, the sure charism of truth (CCC94).
The Church forcefully and specifically exhorts all the Christian faithful... to learn the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ, by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures. Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ (CCC133). "The Word of God, which is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, is set forth and displays its power in a most wonderful way in the writings of the New Testament" [Rom 1:16] which hand on the ultimate truth of God's Revelation (CCC124). All the faithful share in understanding and handing on revealed truth. They have received the anointing of the Holy Spirit, who instructs them [1 Jn 2:20, 27] and guides them into all truth [Jn 16:13] (CCC91). In the New Covenant, prayer is the living relationship of the children of God with their Father who is good beyond measure, with his Son Jesus Christ and with the Holy Spirit (CCC2565).
All Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity. All are called to holiness: "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" [Mt 5:48]. In order to reach this perfection the faithful should use the strength dealt out to them by Christ's gift, so that... doing the will of the Father in everything, they may wholeheartedly devote themselves to the glory of God and to the service of their neighbor. Thus the holiness of the People of God will grow in fruitful abundance, as is clearly shown in the history of the Church through the lives of so many saints (CCC2013). The way of perfection passes by way of the Cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle [2 Tim 4]. Spiritual progress entails the ascesis and mortification that gradually lead to living in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes: He who climbs never stops going from beginning to beginning, through beginnings that have no end. He never stops desiring what he already knows (CCC2015).
"Although he was a Son, [Jesus] learned obedience through what he suffered" [Heb 5:8]. How much more reason have we sinful creatures to learn obedience - we who in him have become children of adoption. We ask our Father to unite our will to his Son's, in order to fulfill his will, his plan of salvation for the life of the world. We are radically incapable of this, but united with Jesus and with the power of his Holy Spirit, we can surrender our will to him and decide to choose what his Son has always chosen: to do what is pleasing to the Father [Jn 8:29]. In committing ourselves to [Christ], we can become one spirit with him, and thereby accomplish his will, in such wise that it will be perfect on earth as it is in heaven. Consider how Jesus Christ teaches us to be humble, by making us see that our virtue does not depend on our work alone but on grace from on high (CCC2825). "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Mt 16:24) (CCC2029). Christ unites us with his Passover: all his members must strive to resemble him, "until Christ be formed" in them [Gal 4:19], "For this reason we... are taken up into the mysteries of his life,... associated with his sufferings as the body with its head, suffering with him, that with him we may be glorified" [Phil 3:21; Rom 8:17] (CCC793).
Faith is an entirely free gift that God makes to man. We can lose this priceless gift, as St. Paul indicated to St. Timothy: "Wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith" [1Tim 1:18-19]. To live, grow and persevere in the faith until the end we must nourish it with the word of God; we must beg the Lord to increase our faith; [Mk 9:24; Lk 17:5; 22:32] it must be "working through charity," abounding in hope, and rooted in the faith of the Church [Gal 5:6; Rom 15:13; Jas 2:14-26] (CCC162). Faith makes us taste in advance the light of the beatific vision, the goal of our journey here below. Then we shall see God "face to face", "as he is" [1Cor 13:12; 1Jn 3:2]. So faith is already the beginning of eternal life (CCC163).
Believing in Jesus Christ and in the One who sent him for our salvation is necessary for obtaining that salvation [Mk 16:16; Jn 3:36; 6:40]. Since "without faith it is impossible to please [God]" and to attain to the fellowship of his sons, therefore without faith no one has ever attained justification, nor will anyone obtain eternal life 'But he who endures to the end' [Mt 10:22; 24: 13; Heb 11:6] (CCC161). We can therefore hope in the glory of heaven promised by God to those who love him and do his will [Rom 8:28-30; Mt 7:21]. In every circumstance, each one of us should hope, with the grace of God, to persevere "to the end" [Mt 10:22] and to obtain the joy of heaven, as God's eternal reward for the good works accomplished with the grace of Christ (CCC1821).
Sin is an offense against God. It rises up against God in a disobedience contrary to the obedience of Christ (CCC1871). Sins are rightly evaluated according to their gravity. The distinction between mortal and venial sin, already evident in Scripture, [1Jn 5:16-17] became part of the tradition of the Church (CCC1854). Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God's law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him. Venial sin allows charity to subsist, even though it offends and wounds it (CCC1855). Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent (CCC1857). Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments, corresponding to the answer of Jesus to the rich young man: "Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and your mother" [Mk 10:19] (CCC1858).
Mortal sin is a radical possibility of human freedom, as is love itself. It results in the loss of charity and the privation of sanctifying grace, that is, of the state of grace. If it is not redeemed by repentance and God's forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ's kingdom and the eternal death of hell, for our freedom has the power to make choices for ever, with no turning back. However, although we can judge that an act is in itself a grave offense, we must entrust judgment of persons to the justice and mercy of God (CCC1861). Venial sin weakens charity; it manifests a disordered affection for created goods; it impedes the soul's progress in the exercise of the virtues and the practice of the moral good; it merits temporal punishment. Deliberate and unrepented venial sin disposes us little by little to commit mortal sin. However venial sin does not set us in direct opposition to the will and friendship of God; it does not break the covenant with God. With God's grace it is humanly reparable. Venial sin does not deprive the sinner of sanctifying grace, friendship with God, charity, and consequently eternal happiness (CCC1875).
"Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin" [Mk 3:29; Mt 12:32; Lk 12:10]. There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit. Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss (CCC1864). Blasphemy is directly opposed to the second commandment. It consists in uttering against God - inwardly or outwardly - words of hatred, reproach, or defiance; in speaking ill of God; in failing in respect toward him in one's speech; in misusing God's name. St. James condemns those "who blaspheme that honorable name [of Jesus] by which you are called" [Jas 2:7] (CCC2148).