Thursday, March 01, 2007

RC views of justification (updated!?)

Dr Williams argued today that we must never get bored of making the distinction that our works are the non-meritorious (evidential) grounds of our future justification or we will find ourselves in Ratzinger's lap through ennui.

Apparently our RC non-brothers really do officially believe that we merit our salvation (in part ? and through God's grace ? or something blah, blah). This must be a different gospel and damnable heresy (depending on the relationship between nature, creation, and grace and the type of merit) and we must say that the Reformation was worth it after all. If Justification is the article by which the church stands or falls (as Luther argued) then we would have to say that the Roman Catholic church is not a Church although many of it members may be converted and it has the form of Christian Baptism. The sacraments alone cannot make a church: there must be the Word of the gospel of the Bible.

The RC church has apparently explicitly repudiated the work of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) and has made no fully official authoritative statements on justification since The Canons and Decrees of the Council Trent except the Joint Declaration on Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ).

The official (presented by the Pope to the Church, though I think not infalible ex cathedra?) teaching of the present day Roman Catholic church can be found in its Catechism.

The Catechism, by the way, is dedicated "To The Immaculate"!:

At the conclusion of this document presenting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, I beseech the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Incarnate Word and Mother of the Church, to support with her powerful intercession the catechetical work of the entire Church on every level, at this time when she is called to a new effort of evangelization. May the light of the true faith free humanity from the ignorance and slavery of sin in order to lead it to the only freedom worthy of the name (cf. Jn 8:32): that of life in Jesus Christ under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, here below and in the Kingdom of heaven, in the fullness of the blessed vision of God face to face (cf. I Cor 13:12; 2 Cor 5:6-8)!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can search the Catechism of the Catholic Church at http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc.htm - its precise status may be debatable but it should give one an idea of common RC teaching.

Marc Lloyd said...

Thanks, anonymous. Yes I think the Catechism is the official teaching, isn't it? But I guess not ex-cathedra infallible stuff? Anyway, might check it out sometime along with Trent and the Lutheran statment.