7 Common Misunderstandings About What Catholics Believe

There are certain incorrect ideas and misunderstandings about what Catholics actually believe. Sometimes Catholics themselves are confused by ideas they have heard. Other times a Catholic may simply not have learned a belief through no fault of their own. Often non-Catholic sources teach the wrong thing about what Catholics really believe. The following are some misunderstandings and false ideas that people may think:

1. FALSE: Catholics pray to statues and worship saints

TRUE: Catholics never pray to statues and never worship saints. They pray to God with the saint. The statue is nothing more than a work of art, no different from a painting, photograph, or pencil drawing. Catholics may use these works of art in either of three ways:

1. As a teaching tool for teaching a religious event or idea by illustration.

2. As an inspiration to follow the example of the person depicted in the work of art because they are such a great example of how humans can follow the example of Christ.

3. As a means of focusing one’s mind on a saint, their virtue and holiness, as an aid to prayer.

When Catholics “pray to saints” what they are really doing is asking the saint to pray to God with them for their intention e.g. a man doing home remodeling in his home may pray to St Joseph the carpenter to ask Joseph to pray with him to God for guidance and strength to do the job well. It is essentially having the saint as a prayer partner.


2. FALSE: The pope and bishops can change anything they want in the Catholic Church.

TRUE: The pope and bishops cannot change a single item of Catholic beliefs. They can change only what we do about those beliefs, how those beliefs are acted upon, and how they are taught. They can clarify existing beliefs, but the beliefs themselves they cannot change.

3. FALSE: The pope can establish new beliefs in the church

TRUE: The pope can clarify and ratify existing beliefs, i.e. make them official, but he can do this only under certain conditions. This has been done only twice in 2000 years.

Those conditions are:


The belief must have existed since the early days of the church

The belief cannot contradict or restrict any already existing belief

There must be a biblical basis for the belief

The belief must be meaningful to all cultures, not contrary to any culture, and practicable among Catholics in all countries.


4. FALSE: Church councils create new beliefs or change beliefs in the church

TRUE: Like the Pope, church councils can only clarify and ratify existing beliefs. They may change what we do with those beliefs. They cannot change the beliefs themselves nor create new ones. When church councils clarify and explain beliefs, the Pope, who is always an active bishop, must be a participant and the same conditions apply to the councils of bishops as apply to the Pope.


5. FALSE: Right and wrong are determined by our conscience. Therefore if you always act in accordance with your conscience you will never sin.


TRUE: Right are wrong were determined by God through eternal law long before humans were ever created. Attempting to decide right and wrong ourselves is the effect of original sin and leads to multiple sins. We must always act on Gods idea of right and wrong, not our own.

The right to use our conscience is contingent upon our conscience being correctly formed. If our conscience is not correctly formed, then we have no right to use it. A correctly formed conscience is one that is aligned with God’s knowledge of right and wrong. Our conscience is correctly formed by the development of virtue. Each person has a responsibility to correctly form their own conscience. Since the teachings of the church come from God, disagreement with the teachings of the church is disagreement with God and therefore evidence of an incorrectly formed conscience.

6. FALSE: Catholics believe that charms, medals, etc, can help you to heaven

TRUE: Religious medals, scapulars, blessed images, etc are only aids to faith. They serve as practical and personal reminders of our faith, identify people as Catholics, and also serve the same purposes as other religious art. While there have been private revelations to saints about certain images and medals, their effectiveness comes from gifts of grace from God himself, as well as the grace and faith of the person who wears or uses them, and certainly not from the object itself.

7. FALSE: Catholics believe life on earth is a test or challenge by which you earn your way to heaven

TRUE: Heaven is not a reward. It is our default destination. We are created to go there. The Catholic Church teaches that people are created to “know, love, and serve” God on earth and “to be happy with him in heaven”. Knowing, loving, and serving God are simply the means by which we carry on his work. Therefore life on earth is our opportunity to apply our knowledge, love, and obedience to God, so that we can carry on his work for a while here on earth. Then, when our earthly time is finished, we will have eternal life in total happiness with God in heaven. This is the reason for our existence. It is what we are created to do. It is not a reward, but a fulfillment of God’s purpose for creating us. Whenever we sin, we turn our backs to God’s purpose for creating us and in doing so we hinder our own fulfillment. Thus, sin is not merely a rejection of God’s rules of conduct, but a rejection of eternal life in heaven. Therefore sin leads us to the alternative, which is eternity in hell.

-written by Deacon Ron (Contributor)-

Did Catholics change the Sabbath?

The following question was asked on one of Connecticut Catholic Corner's Youtube videos...

NadinaFraser29 asked: Is it true that the Catholic's changed the Shabbat from Saturday to Sunday? And if the answer is yes, how does that differ from the Crucifixion. The established word of God in anyway changed by man is the Crucifying of Jesus all over again because He died for the truth which is The Word of God.

Deacon Ron answers: First of all Christ died for the salvation of our souls, not to preserve any particular truth or to make any kind of a statement.

If I understand your question properly you are questioning why Catholics keep Sunday as the Sabbath and not Saturday. I will try to explain.

There seems to be some confusion here about "the seventh day" and "Shabbat". Although often used interchangeably in modern times, the concepts are not exactly identical. Shabbat is the Jewish observance of the seventh day as a day of rest. It does not mean the seventh day itself. "Seventh” is not a direct translation of "Shabbat".

This observance is done in response to the Lord's commandment to keep the seventh day holy. But what is the seventh day? If you consider Sunday to be the first day of the week, then the seventh day is Saturday. But if you consider Monday to be the first day of the week, then the seventh day is Sunday. The ancient Jews considered Sunday to be the first day of the week as a matter of human tradition. It was not ordained so by God.

How would the ancient Jews know on what day to begin the count of the seven days? The bible does not specifically say that the first day of creation was a Sunday. If you interpret the bible literally starting from the day that Christ died, which is known to be a Friday, and count back all the years, months, and days back to the day of creation, then the first day of creation actually calculates out to be a Thursday!

Catholics, in fact all Christians, keep the seventh day as holy, Except for Seventh day Adventist, all Christians begin the count of seven with Monday so that the seventh day coincides with the resurrection of Christ. How fitting that our holiest day of the week coincides with the holiest event in our Christian faith!

It is true that our calendar week begins on Sunday, but so what? Socially and economically our first day of the week is Monday. What day we begin the seven day count on is not specified in scripture and what we call the first day of the week is irrelevant. What matters is the every seventh day we take time to out to take care of our spiritual lives, to rest from our work, and worship God.

If I have mis-understood your question, please clarify.

God Bless, you,

Deacon Ron
[Deacon Ron is a contributor for Connecticut Catholic Corner]

Bring on your questions!

Connecticut Catholic Corner will soon have a new feature allowing readers to ask and have questions answered by a member of Catholic clergy- specifically Deacon Ron.

In the past, I have answered assorted questions as a Catholic lay person and I will continue to do that when questions are specifically asked of me. If you'd like to have your question answered by a member of the clergy, please put "Deacon Ron" in the subject area of the email. If you'd like to hear from both myself and Deacon Ron, merely put "question" in the subject area. All emails should go to: CtCatholicCorner@AOL(dot)com

Thanks!
Julie
Connecticut Catholic Corner

The Catholic View from Catholic Clergy: The Crucifixion of Jesus

Written by: Contributor Deacon Ron

Sin entered the world and came into our lives as a result of the original sin committed by Adam and Eve. Jesus saves us by counteracting or balancing out what, Adam and Eve did.

When Adam and Eve sinned, their motivation was pride. They wanted to be more than they were. In their pride, they thought they deserved to be more. They wanted to be like God. Because of the lie told to them by Satan, they thought they had to eat the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil so that they could be just like God. However, being creatures rather than the creator they could never be just like God, but only resemble him.

Knowing the problems that the Knowledge of good and evil would cause the human race, God forbade them to eat the fruit of that tree. To eat the forbidden fruit, they had to put God’s will aside and replace it with their own will, believing it would make them like God. Having replaced God’s will with their own, they committed the Original Sin.

To undo this, Jesus had to do just the opposite. He had to put his human will aside and accept God’s will. This is what he did during the in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night he was arrested. Then to undo the pride of Adam and Eve, Christ had to suffer humiliation. Jesus allowed himself to be arrested, though innocent of any wrong doing. The Roman soldiers stripped him and put a cloak on him, pretending it was the royal robe of a king. Then they taunted and teased him, pretending he was their king, attempting to humiliate him.

The sinful act of Adam and Eve required the use of their hands. They had to pick the forbidden fruit and eat it. The Roman soldiers put a reed in the hand of Jesus. The Romans pretended it was a royal scepter, again mocking him as king. It was no good to Jesus, since it is just a useless weed. The fruit eaten by Adam and Eve also did them no good, instead it brought them sin and damnation.

Then the Romans chained our Lord to a pillar and whipped him without mercy, punishing his body. The sin of Adam and Eve required the use of their bodies. The punishment of their bodies was that they were banished from the Garden of Eden and had from then on had to work for their food.

However, a human being not just a body, for we have mind and spirit, that is to say, a soul. To punish only the body is to punish only half a person. The punishment of the mind and spirit, the soul of Adam and Eve, was that they no longer had such an intimate connection with God. They were now separated from him by their sin. Jesus also experienced a punishment of mind and spirit. For him, it was the Way of the Cross.

This was accomplished as he carried his cross to the place of crucifixion. On the way, he met his mother. Imagine her pain and suffering knowing that her only son was to be executed by the cruelest punishment the Romans could devise. Now imagine Jesus knowing his mothers pain, knowing he was the reason for her pain, and knowing how the sight of him, covered in blood from the whipping, must have made her feel. Jesus knew these things and it could only have been extreme anguish for him. This was his punishment of his mind and spirit.

At the place of the crucifixion, Jesus was nailed to the cross. St Paul called it a tree. It is in fact the Tree of Life. This is because it is through the cross that we have eternal life. By his death on the cross and his resurrection, we have redemption for our sins and therefore eternal life in heaven.

There was a tree of life in the Garden of Eden also. God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden so that they could not eat the fruit of that Tree of Life. This was necessary because salvation could come only through Jesus Christ and only at the time deemed proper by the Lord.

Through the Mass we are present at the crucifixion and experience its salvation. At Mass, the body of Christ is broken and his blood is separate from his body, just as his body was damaged on the cross and his blood then flowed out of him. Thus, every time we participate in Mass, we are present at the Crucifixion of Christ.

Our first motivation for not sinning is that we ourselves do not want to spend eternity in hell. That is a good and valid motivation. However, if we love someone we do not want him or her to suffer. When we truly love someone, we may even wish to take the suffering upon ourselves so that they do not have to suffer. Knowing that it is because of our sins that Christ had to suffer, in our love for him, we want to reduce his suffering. Therefore, our love for Jesus is another motivation to not sin. Ultimately the responsibility for his suffering is ours. If we truly accept that responsibility, then we are motivated to resist temptation and to not sin.

The willingness of Christ to suffer for us is a loud and clear statement of his love for us and the ultimate example of how we are to love one another. Jesus does not hate us because we make him suffer. He wants no revenge and he does not harbor any anger towards us for causing his suffering. He is the perfect example of how forgiving we must be toward one another.

On every Good Friday, let us pause a moment and reflect on how the crucifixion of Jesus atoned for our sins by undoing what Adam and Eve did. But let us also reflect on the love and forgiveness that our savior is showing us, and then let us show it to one another.

-Contributor Deacon Ron-