Joseph Hollcraft M.A.
Intro to the Catechism of the Catholic Church CCP 201
Part III: Life in Christ
Week 1: October 17, 2007***The Deposit of Faith and Morals (Catechism) are the Church’s teaching and “structure of faith” that is an encounter with Christ as it is in intimate dialogue with his bride.
***relationship of married couple
- Part Three: life in Christ: Life in Christ is a participation in God’s divine nature in which we are brought in to the light (life in the Trinity). As children, we are called to respond to the evangellion by living a life worthy of the Gospel. We must respond to the call to “be perfect like my Father in heaven is perfect” (Mt.5.48). A place of perfection is a call to constant conversion and knowledge of self. In order to know self we must deny self. This leads to an interior transformation (analogy of Titanic—relationship is not always seen…like growth). In turn, we begin to live a life worthy of the Gospel. Our vocation (L. vocatio—“to call”) receives shape and form. What are the key components to living a life in the Spirit? We must first see that we are an image of God (CCC 1691-1698).
A. The Dignity of the Human person: The integrity of the human person is rooted in our likeness in God that is fulfilled in our vocation to divine beatitude that we are called to freely choose to fulfill our human potential. We are called to choose the good over evil using our moral conscience, thus growing in the interior life. We are called to avoid sin, entrusting ourselves constantly to the mercy and care of our heavenly Father. Ultimately, through this divine likeness we grow in charity and attain the heights of holiness (CCC 1700).
1. Image of God. We have been imbued with the very revelation of the mystery of Christ in becoming a new creation in Baptism.
a. Through this regenerative force of grace we are called to live in the fullness of Christian beatitude, firm in divine sonship, we choose to freely love him and accept full responsibility for the life that is a struggle in grace (read Heb.12.5).
1. In union with the Savior, we attain perfection through a life of obedience and charity, which is holiness (CCC 1701; 1709).
2. Beatitude: The law of the new covenant, a charter for Christian holiness. The Beatitudes are Christ’s deepest yearnings for us to know eternal happiness here on earth. God has placed this law on our heart so as to fulfill our vocation (CCC 1719).
a. Christ’s paradoxical promises, in the Beatitudes we are confronted with decisive choices concerning earthly good.
b. More than just a preamble to Christ’s call to be salt and light for the world; and to call God our father…it is the moral prescription…the “how” to achieving the heights of holiness.
3. Freedom: God’s greatest gift to the human race as a child of God. With the Beatitudes, we move from viewing morality from rules to virtues. Consider gravity and the natural law…the more we seek to defy it we only illustrate it. Freedom makes man a moral subject. Consult Word of the Week on Freedom
a. The Church is an experienced moral teacher and mother. Our spiritual growth is impeded if we see the Church as a list of “Don’ts” –an institutional authoritarianism, as opposed to a mother who wished to bring us to joyfulness and happiness (rarely explored). The moral life is about achieving goodness, which is equipped with disciplines and boundaries. This growth takes place through our freedom.
1. “Rules” our seen by many as an infringement upon our freedom, because they see freedom as “willfulness” as opposed to the gift given to glorify God.
2. The moral life is not something added on to real life from the outside. It is life lived by human beings. We live in the gap of the person we are against the person we ought to be…always room for growth in a relationship.
b. Freedom is not “my way” but having the right to do what we ought. Freedom is inextricably bound to Goodness—God’s greatest gift! Analogy of pianist and learning a language (Fr. Pinkaers)…Freedom for excellence…all the more in the moral life!
1. To grow in the moral life and virtue we must see the good instinctive…As a married couple would know their language instinctively
4. Morality: Human acts that are freely chosen in consequence of a judgment of conscience can be morally evaluated (CCC1749).
a. The object, the intention, and the circumstances (secondary) constitute the morality of human acts CCC 1750-1754). “An evil action can never be justified by its good intention. The end does not justify the means when dealing with” (CCC 1759).
5. Passions: The feelings or affections of the sense appetite that serves the faithful to intuit good and avoid evil (CCC 1763; 1771). Passions serve the disposition of the heart.
a. We must have a formed conscience. They can be taken up either in virtue or serve vice (CCC 1774).
6. Conscience: Consult Word of the Week on Conscience
a. 1 Tim.1.19… “conscience”—moral vision
b. Conscience is to good and evil as sight is to color. Conscience and the analogy of time (discussed in the session II).
7. The Virtues: A habitual and firm disposition to aspire towards the heights of the greater Good. Virtue maximizes human potential in all things and circumstances. The virtuous person seeks out the good in all occasions (CCC 1803). St. Gregory of Nyssa: “the goal of a virtuous life is to become more like God.”
a. Cardinal virtues: the four virtues that all others are hinged upon: prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance (CCC 1805). Consider their etymology and linguistic background.
1. Prudence: practical reason to discern (understand) the true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it (CCC 1806; 1835). Consult Word of the Week on Prudence
2. Justice: the moral virtue that consists in serving God by giving each their due (CCC 1807; 1836).
3. Fortitude: the moral virtue that ensures constancy and firmness in pursuit of the good; the virtue that helps overcome your fears (CCC 1808; 1837).
4. Temperance: a moral virtue that moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods (CCC 1809; 1838). Consult Word of the Week on Temperance
b. Theological Virtues: These virtues that enable the Christian to live in a closer relationship with the Trinitarian life of God (consider family). They have God as their origin, motive and object (CCC 1840)
1.Faith: belief in God that he has revealed all to us through his Incarnation, Paschal Mystery and the life of the Church (CCC 1814-1816)…cf. James 2.17;26.
2. Hope: Virtue in which we desire the Kingdom of heaven, and with steadfast trust await from God eternal life and the graces that merit it. Hope is the virtue that is placed on our heart that awakens a desire to serve God (CCC 1817-1821).
a. Consult Word of the Week on Hope
3. Charity: to love God above all things, the virtue that “binds all things together in perfect harmony” (Col.3.14). Consider the apostle Paul, “If I have not charity…I am nothing”(1 Cor. 13.1-4).
a. Jn.15…“abide in my love.”
8. Sin: Disobedience to the Father; it is “an offense against reason, truth and right conscience (CCC 1849), a failure of willing sacrifice due to disproportionate attachment to earthly goods. Our lost sense of sin is due to our lost sense of God (Pius XII). Sin is self-centeredness (CCC 1849-1850; 1871-1872). Truth judges sin and we place judgment upon ourselves when we sin. A person living in holiness often calls out sin when abiding in Truth. We are called to call each other to righteousness (2 Tim.4.1-5).
a. Mercy (consider Hb) and Sin: We must confess our sins with contrite hearts and God will save us (cf. 1 Jn. 8-9). We are sinners redeemed.
1. Mt.26.28…The Eucharist is the thank-offering poured out for the forgiveness of sinners (CCC 1846).
2. Rom.5.20…grace trumps sin and conversion requires the necessity of understanding sin to understand our need for the father (CCC 1848).
b. The locus of all sin arises from the heart. The measure of the sin resides principally in the object (CCC 1873).
1. Mortal sin: “Destroys charity in the heart of a man” (CCC 1855) and ultimately leads him away from his ultimate end in God. Three requirements are necessary: grave matter (specified by the 10 commandments), full knowledge, and deliberate consent (CCC 1857).
a. unintentional ignorance: “can diminish or even remove the immutability of the act” (CCC 1860), but we must remember the moral law inscribed on every heart that lies in the stream of our consciousness (CCC 1860)
2. Venial sin: “allows charity to subsist” (CCC 1855), even though it impedes progress in beatitude and service to God (CCC 1862-1863).
3. Ultimately, sin begets sin (analogy of the untreated wound). Sin cultivates a likeness towards it—what you feed grows! Venial sin engenders a movement towards capital sins, which is a life outside the inner-life of God (CCC 1865-1867; 1876).