The divine institution of the natural law

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church

II. THE VISIBLE WORLD

337 God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity and order. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine “work”, concluded by the “rest” of the seventh day.²⁰⁴ On the subject of creation, the sacred text teaches the truths revealed by God for our salvation,²⁰⁵permitting us to “recognize the inner nature, the value and the ordering of the whole of creation to the praise of God.”²⁰⁶

338 Nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator. The world began when God’s word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history are rooted in this primordial event, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time begun.²⁰⁷

339 Each creature possesses its own particular goodness and perfection. For each one of the works of the “six days” it is said: “And God saw that it was good.” “By the very nature of creation, material being is endowed with its own stability, truth and excellence, its own order and laws.”²⁰⁸ Each of the various creatures, willed in its own being, reflects in its own way a ray of God’s infinite wisdom and goodness. Man must therefore respect the particular goodness of every creature, to avoid any disordered use of things which would be in contempt of the Creator and would bring disastrous consequences for human beings and their environment.

353     God willed the diversity of his creatures and their own particular goodness, their interdependence and their order. He destined all material creatures for the good of the human race. Man, and through him all creation, is destined for the glory of God.

354     Respect for laws inscribed in creation and the relations which derive from the nature of things is a principle of wisdom and a foundation for morality.

V. THE PROLIFERATION OF SIN

1865 Sin creates a proclivity to sin; it engenders vice by repetition of the same acts. This results in perverse inclinations which cloud conscience and corrupt the concrete judgment of good and evil. Thus sin tends to reproduce itself and reinforce itself, but it cannot destroy the moral sense at its root.

1866 Vices can be classified according to the virtues they oppose, or also be linked to the capital sins which Christian experience has distinguished, following St. John Cassian and St. Gregory the Great. They are called “capital” because they engender other sins, other vices.¹³⁸ They are pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth or acedia.

1867 The catechetical tradition also recalls that there are “sins that cry to heaven”: the blood of Abel,¹³⁹ the sin of the Sodomites,¹⁴⁰ the cry of the people oppressed in Egypt,¹⁴¹ the cry of the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan,¹⁴² injustice to the wage earner.¹⁴³

1868 Sin is a personal act. Moreover, we have a responsibility for the sins committed by others when we cooperate in them:

– by participating directly and voluntarily in them;

– by ordering, advising, praising, or approving them;

– by not disclosing or not hindering them when we have an obligation to do so;

– by protecting evil-doers.

1869 Thus sin makes men accomplices of one another and causes concupiscence, violence, and injustice to reign among them. Sins give rise to social situations and institutions that are contrary to the divine goodness. “Structures of sin” are the expression and effect of personal sins. They lead their victims to do evil in their turn. In an analogous sense, they constitute a “social sin.”¹⁴⁴

Link

Immoral government coercion is a logical consequence of the artifical birth control mentality.

Here’s the thing, though: the Catholic Church is the world’s biggest and oldest organization.

It has buried all of the greatest empires known to man, from the Romans to the Soviets.

It has establishments literally all over the world, touching every area of human endeavor.

It’s given us some of the world’s greatest thinkers, from Saint Augustine on down to René Girard.

When it does things, it usually has a good reason. Everyone has a right to disagree, but it’s not that they’re a bunch of crazy old white dudes who are stuck in the Middle Ages.

So, what’s going on?

The Church teaches that love, marriage, sex, and procreation are all things that belong together. That’s it. But it’s pretty important. And though the Church has been teaching this for 2,000 years, it’s probably never been as salient as today.

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Abortion As a Blessing, Grace, or Gift–A Renewed Conversation about Reproductive Rights?

The “deep thinkers” at IEET (Institute for Emerging Ethics and Technologies) firmly believe they are the smartest kids in the room, so they spent a lot of time attempting to justify what is (humanly and ethically) totally unjustifiable – abortion. Here’s their latest attempt at taking themselves and their twisted logic way too seriously. – Ed.

Our inability to talk in morally resonant terms about abortion has clouded the broader conversation about mindful childbearing. (There are no “morally resonant” reasons to kill innocent babies in the womb. – Ed.) The cost in recent decades has been devastating. In developing countries millions of real women and children have died because abortion-obsessed American Christians banned family planning conversations as a part of HIV prevention efforts. (This is total “BS”. A flat-out lie! – Ed.) Those lost lives reveal the callous immorality of the anti-choice movement. (Now these guys have unilaterally redefined “callous immorality” as SAVING innocent lives. – Ed.)

Back home, here in the U.S., our inability to claim the moral high ground about abortion has brought us one of the most regressive culture shifts of a generation. (That’s because there is absolutely no moral high ground available when it comes to killing innocent babies. – Ed.) We are, incredibly, faced with “personhood rights” for fertilized eggs, pregnancies that begin legally before we even have sex, politicians with “Rape Tourette’s,” and a stunningly antagonistic debate about contraceptive technologies that could make as many as ninety percent of unintended pregnancies along with consequent suffering and abortions simply obsolete. (I think she is referring to various types of contraceptives that function by killing innocent life, after conception. But you never know! – Ed.)

The voices that are strongest on reproductive rights often falter when it comes to the cultural dialogue. At least part of this absence is because so many of the pro-choice movement’s leaders and funders are secular and civic in their orientation, awkwardly uncomfortable with the moral and spiritual dimension of the conversation, or, for that matter, even with words like moral and spiritual. From language that seems moderately wise–Who decides?–we fall back on “safe, legal and rare” (a questionable effort to please everyone) or even the legal jargon of the “right to privacy.”

A large pile of murdered teeny, weeny babies
numbering – so far – about 55 MILLION!

The other side talks about murdering teeny, weeny babies and then mind-melds images of ultrasounds and Gerber babies with faded photos of late term abortions. (As if none of these accurately reflect the sad reality of abortion, as well as the abortion mentality. – Ed.)  And we come back by talking about privacy?? Is that like the right to commit murder in the privacy of your own home or doctor’s office? (As a matter of fact, it is.  Now they’re catching on! – Ed.) Even apart from the dubious moral equivalence, let’s be real: In the age of Facebook and Twitter, is there a female under twenty-five in who gives a rat’s patooey about privacy, let alone thinks of it as a core value? (The right to privacy was merely the context and the false, fabricated  justification for the court’s ruling on the non-existent right to abortion. – Ed.) 

There’s more – but why bother? These guys are either deliberately, or by nature, almost totally ignorant about the truth of the issues they so poorly attempt to address. Probably because ignorance is their only hope! – Ed.

VP Biden urges churches to support gun control, but totally ignores 300,000+ annual abortion deaths.

WASHINGTON (TheBlaze/AP) — Vice President Joe Biden has a commandment for pastors, rabbis and nuns: He wants them to tell their flocks that enacting gun control is the moral thing to do.

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Editor’s note: Obama and Biden as great moral leaders of our time. What a (laughable) concept!

How… did the tiniest of minorities — no more than 2% of the population — get in a position to silence the beliefs and punish the practices of hundreds of millions?

In free societies, pornography largely remains an often frowned upon matter of private adult autonomy while the global homosexual movement is increasingly gaining acceptance of its agenda as a civil rights issue demanding public approval. While pornographers like Hugh Hefner in the Playboy Mansion have historically been content with being unhindered by otherwise disapproving individuals in a “live and let live” libertarian legal regime, Ruse writes that modern homosexuals will brook no such agreement to disagree, but rather “want Christians” (and all others) “prostrate before them and before the law.”

Ruse’s article in the end indicates the reason for these differing demands for autonomy and approval. “What we know,” he writes, is this. No matter how many Christians they persecute and prosecute, no matter how much society tolerates or even celebrates their sexual proclivities, no matter how many Gay-Straight Alliances are foisted upon our public schools, none of that will still in them the nagging feeling that what they do in bed is unnatural, and their attraction to their own sex is morally wrong. That nagging voice will never go entirely away.

Homosexual demands for public approval thus manifest a vain, twisted effort to achieve public moral compensation from society for private behavior that simply cannot be right. Falsehood cannot coexist with freedom, as the latter will expose the former. Thus advocates of a false agenda must suppress freedom with force.

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“It is perfectly clear and evident, Venerable Brothers, that the very notion of a civilization is a fiction of the brain if it rest not on the abiding principles of truth and the unchanging laws of virtue and justice, and if unfeigned love knit not together the wills of men, and gently control the interchange and the character of their mutual service.”

Catholics often hear that we intend to “impose our morality” upon our neighbors, and that this can’t be done in a truly free, that is to say thoroughly secular society.  Set aside the plain fact that all law imposes a moral vision, though it is seldom consistent or adequate, and it is sometimes perverse.

The fact is, morality admits no peculiar possessives.  If a morality is only mine, it isn’t morality but meaningless predilection.  Either a moral law exists, applying to everyone at all times, or it doesn’t.  If it doesn’t, there is no moral reason to prefer civilization to savagery; the latter can be a lot more fun.  But we won’t have that choice anyway, because we will lose civilization itself.  What we now call “civilization” and “culture,” Pope Leo calls “a fiction of the brain,” a vain idea, when the reality is gone.

That loss of morality understood as what we receive, not what we create; not what shackles us, but what sets us free to realize our human potential, implies already the loss of “unfeigned love” which should knit together “the wills of men, and gently control the interchange and the character of their mutual service.”  We must insist upon this connection.  I cannot give amoral love.  But human beings need love; they need the love that brings them deeper into the truth.

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The divine institution of the natural law

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church

II. THE VISIBLE WORLD

337 God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity and order. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine “work”, concluded by the “rest” of the seventh day.²⁰⁴ On the subject of creation, the sacred text teaches the truths revealed by God for our salvation,²⁰⁵permitting us to “recognize the inner nature, the value and the ordering of the whole of creation to the praise of God.”²⁰⁶

338 Nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator. The world began when God’s word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history are rooted in this primordial event, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time begun.²⁰⁷

339 Each creature possesses its own particular goodness and perfection. For each one of the works of the “six days” it is said: “And God saw that it was good.” “By the very nature of creation, material being is endowed with its own stability, truth and excellence, its own order and laws.”²⁰⁸ Each of the various creatures, willed in its own being, reflects in its own way a ray of God’s infinite wisdom and goodness. Man must therefore respect the particular goodness of every creature, to avoid any disordered use of things which would be in contempt of the Creator and would bring disastrous consequences for human beings and their environment.

353     God willed the diversity of his creatures and their own particular goodness, their interdependence and their order. He destined all material creatures for the good of the human race. Man, and through him all creation, is destined for the glory of God.

354     Respect for laws inscribed in creation and the relations which derive from the nature of things is a principle of wisdom and a foundation for morality.

V. THE PROLIFERATION OF SIN

1865 Sin creates a proclivity to sin; it engenders vice by repetition of the same acts. This results in perverse inclinations which cloud conscience and corrupt the concrete judgment of good and evil. Thus sin tends to reproduce itself and reinforce itself, but it cannot destroy the moral sense at its root.

1866 Vices can be classified according to the virtues they oppose, or also be linked to the capital sins which Christian experience has distinguished, following St. John Cassian and St. Gregory the Great. They are called “capital” because they engender other sins, other vices.¹³⁸ They are pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth or acedia.

1867 The catechetical tradition also recalls that there are “sins that cry to heaven”: the blood of Abel,¹³⁹ the sin of the Sodomites,¹⁴⁰ the cry of the people oppressed in Egypt,¹⁴¹ the cry of the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan,¹⁴² injustice to the wage earner.¹⁴³

1868 Sin is a personal act. Moreover, we have a responsibility for the sins committed by others when we cooperate in them:

– by participating directly and voluntarily in them;

– by ordering, advising, praising, or approving them;

– by not disclosing or not hindering them when we have an obligation to do so;

– by protecting evil-doers.

1869 Thus sin makes men accomplices of one another and causes concupiscence, violence, and injustice to reign among them. Sins give rise to social situations and institutions that are contrary to the divine goodness. “Structures of sin” are the expression and effect of personal sins. They lead their victims to do evil in their turn. In an analogous sense, they constitute a “social sin.”¹⁴⁴

Link

Fundamental political moral battleground: Earned success vs learned hopelessness.

“Anyone who reads the words of the Founders,” Mr. Brooks writes, “cannot miss their keen emphasis on the morality of the systems they intended to create. Our ideas about free enterprise and liberty were born from a sense of what is right and what helps us to thrive as people, not from a monomaniacal obsession with what makes us rich.”

Historian Matthew Spalding echoes this theme in his 2009 book, “We Still Hold These Truths”: “As the Founders saw it, the right to property was not simply an economic concept, and was much more than owning a bit of land. It was a first principle of liberty. The essence of liberty is the freedom to develop one’s talents, pursue opportunity, and generally take responsibility for one’s own life and well-being.”

Mr. Brooks calls that “earned success,” and he’s got plenty of social science research that shows people are happier when they have a chance to earn their success. That doesn’t mean equality of outcome, however. Some people are always going to do better than others, and Americans understand and accept that.

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We’re all expected to make prudential judgments about the morality of our actions and those of others.

For if we could not judge the actions of others, that would be tantamount to denying that moral principles can be applied in practice, even though they must be accepted in theory. The final consequence is that morality would be rendered meaningless as a standard to guide human actions. That leads to the most complete subjectivism — a free for all in which everyone does what he fancies.

That also causes people to completely lose their moral sense; and it is perhaps one of the causes of the amorality of our present age.

Since religious people become insecure facing the “judge not” argument of the Gospel, let us examine more closely what it actually means.

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Submitted by AndyP/Doria2

PASSAGES ON SEXUAL PURITY from the New Testament

Link to article

(NT Passages PDF file)

Immoral government coercion is a logical consequence of the artifical birth control mentality.

Here’s the thing, though: the Catholic Church is the world’s biggest and oldest organization. It has buried all of the greatest empires known to man, from the Romans to the Soviets. It has establishments literally all over the world, touching every area of human endeavor. It’s given us some of the world’s greatest thinkers, from Saint Augustine on down to René Girard. When it does things, it usually has a good reason. Everyone has a right to disagree, but it’s not that they’re a bunch of crazy old white dudes who are stuck in the Middle Ages.

So, what’s going on?

The Church teaches that love, marriage, sex, and procreation are all things that belong together. That’s it. But it’s pretty important. And though the Church has been teaching this for 2,000 years, it’s probably never been as salient as today.

Read more

Study: Moral standards have been replaced by feelings.

This latest study cited by David Brooks confirms what conservatives have known for a generation: Moral standards have been replaced by feelings. Of course, those on the left only believe this when an “eminent sociologist” is cited by a writer at a major liberal newspaper.

What is disconcerting about Brooks’s piece is that nowhere in what is an important column does he mention the reason for this disturbing trend: namely, secularism.

The intellectual class and the Left still believe that secularism is an unalloyed blessing. They are wrong. Secularism is good for government. But it is terrible for society (though still preferable to bad religion) and for the individual.

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Obama Plan: Destroying Christianity destroys the culture and civilization it spawned.

The modern left understands one fundamental reality: Destroying Christianity destroys the culture and civilization it spawned. They are inextricably linked. This is why socialists, such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Saul Alinsky and George Soros, have championed militant anti-Christianity, free love, contraception and abortion. Smash the family and traditional morality and the economic system they gave birth to – capitalism – will come crashing down. This is the Marxist project: Sweep the Christian West into the dustbin of history.

Mr. Obama is a Leninist – a committed revolutionary, who is embarked upon an ambitious project to transform America. He worships statism and secularism – the very antithesis of our Founding Fathers. He has put the United States on the path of civilizational decline and moral ruin. And Obamacare is his Trojan horse.

Link

While most Mormons are very pro-life, the LDS Church is (officially) much less so.

One area where most Mormons are excellent is morality. The two missionaries we spoke to had no problem denouncing abortion as murder, and saying that even in the tough cases (rape, incest, etc.), there are better options. In fact, they pointed to the numerous social services which the LDS Church provided. I said, “I thought your church permitted abortion in some circumstances?” and they denied it. At this point, I read from the official LDS website:

Church leaders have said that some exceptional circumstances may justify an abortion, such as when pregnancy is the result of incest or rape, when the life or health of the mother is judged by competent medical authority to be in serious jeopardy, or when the fetus is known by competent medical authority to have severe defects that will not allow the baby to survive beyond birth. But even these circumstances do not automatically justify an abortion. Those who face such circumstances should consider abortion only after consulting with their local Church leaders and receiving a confirmation through earnest prayer.

So in fact, while most Mormons are very pro-life, the LDS Church is much less so. Cary then asked, “Wait, so is murder sometimes okay?” The two missionaries were clearly unaware that their church taught this, and seemed troubled by it. One of them speculated that the local church leaders wouldn’t permit an abortion, despite what it said, but I don’t think he even convinced himself.

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This Week’s “Dispersing the Smoke of Satan”: Grapling with the widespread failure of American Catholic Church leaders to teach and defend Catholic truth.

In 1972, Pope Paul VI observed,
“From some fissure,
the smoke of Satan
has entered the Temple of God.”

The purpose of this weekly column is to help wake
the bulk of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics
from their self-imposed slumber
and powerfully remind them of who they are,
and what they are called by God, to be.

This week’s story: Spiritual Abuse

In September of 2002, Father Joseph Fessio, S.J. addressed the group, “Catholic Citizens of Illinois” where he attempted to explain the various causes of the diabolical crisis in which the post-Vatican II Catholic Church has become mired.

“What we are seeing today is a crisis in fidelity to Catholic truth: in accepting that truth on the part of the faithful and the priests, and on enforcing and defending that truth on the part of Bishops.”

Father Fessio was quick to point that “the crisis in the Church today is not pedophilia.” Indeed, the overwhelming majority of abuse cases involve homosexual priests molesting teenage boys barely under the age of eighteen. In the past decades, hundreds of problem priests have simply been shuffled back and forth from parish to parish, leaving trails of abuse across the country.

“It’s not just a problem of priests who are homosexuals”, cautioned Father Fessio, “but Bishops who are derelict in their duties. These scandals have been covered up, lies have been told, and lies have become a culture in some areas.” He also noted that while hundreds of priests have been defrocked, the colossal failure of the Bishops to root out and correct sexual deviancy in their own dioceses has yet to result in any Bishop being removed.

Faithful Catholics see the cause of the sex abuse crisis as the rejection of the Church’s traditional teaching on sexual morality by American society, including, sadly, most Catholics.

But the Faith was lost first.

St. Paul says of those who lost their Faith, “they were turned over to their lusts”. Father Fessio noted that the crisis of dissenting Catholic laity, priests and Bishops was born in the rejection the Church’s teaching in Humanae Vitae, published in 1968, which reinforced long held Catholic values in the midst of the hedonistic revolution known as ‘the Sixties.’

This revolution has ushered in a growing plague of societal ills — divorce, child and spousal abuse, rape, and abortion — that emerge from the disordered ‘free love’ view of human sexuality that dominates our culture today.

Commenting on the traditional Catholic view, Father Fessio affirmed that “God created us male and female for a number of purposes, but he made the marriage bond sacred, so that there is an indissoluble bond between the marriage act and openness to life. But if you dissolve that bond…there’s no way to justify restricting that pleasure to only married couples. Why not outside of marriage?”

The removal of the unity of sexual intimacy and marriage has “removed the bulwark that helped people to resist sexual temptation” and other moral lapses.

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*****

If we begin to step up in faith, God will certainly lead us forward. If not, this mess in which we we presently find ourselves will likely continue to worsen … and we will all deservedly
suffer the consequences!

This is a time for heroes, for straight talk, for prayer, and for inspired, creative thinking. This is a time for good people
of action (and substantial intestinal fortitude) to step up,
realize their true vocation, and become saints.

Any ideas or suggestions? Anything that’s working well
in your parish? How about things that are NOT working,
but should be? Let us know about it!

Click here to send in
your detailed comments and suggestions.
We’ll post them every Tuesday
in our new weekly column

“Dispersing the Smoke of Satan”

Your comments and suggestions are very welcome.

Thank you!

The Morals of Killing bin Laden: Catholic Perspective

…we must remember that Christ himself died to make salvation possible for all men, Osama bin Laden included.

Read more from Jimmy Akin

You can’t lose 53 million lives (to abortion) and not also expect it to have a serious economic impact.

Economists tell us that unless we raise taxes, cut benefits, or overhaul the entire system, both Medicare and Social Security will be a crisis in about twenty years.  Why is that?  A big reason is that the prevalence of abortion means there are a diminished number of workers to support the beneficiaries.

In 2008, the Social Security program tells us there were 3.2  workers for  every retired, disabled, or survivor beneficiary.  By 2030, though, there will be just 2.2 workers per beneficiary, that is, the taxes of two people will have to pay for the benefit that three people’s taxes now cover. That’s a heavier tax burden than either individuals or the economy will be able to bear.

Some of this is a consequence of the aging of the large baby boom generation and people generally living longer, but abortion is certainly also taking its toll.

According to estimates provided by political scientist Laura Hussey, Ph.D., of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, if abortion had not been legalized in 1973, there would have been 17.2 million more people employed in 2008, earning nearly $400 billion in wages and salary.  At the current rates, that would have meant more than $11 billion more contributed to Medicare and at least $47.4 billion more going to Social Security.

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NAF How-To Textbook Pushes Abortion Traning in Med Schools

NAF’s (National Abortion Federation) philosophy is that once a physician has done an abortion, any personal qualms or moral arguments against doing them are shot to pieces and it’s easier to get that physician to do them in his or her practice later. The Bible, in I Timothy, talks about the behavior of people who have turned away from their faith and as a result they have had “their conscience seared with a hot iron.” When I think of NAF’s goal of forcing abortion training on medical students, I am reminded of this verse. It’s the idea that someone can become so desensitized to evil that they can no longer differentiate between right and wrong. NAF’s goal is to catch students early, abuse their consciences so much that these same students are willing to believe that performing abortions is a good thing!

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What’s so great about the Catholic religion?

Q: What’s so great about the Catholic religion?

A: The Catholic Church is the only church that was ever personally founded by Jesus Christ … while he still walked the earth. (Jesus is God, incarnate.)

The Catholic Church has Jesus Christ as its eternal head, and the Holy Spirit as its perpetual guide and advocate.

The only church that was ever authentically established and empowered in this way … the Catholic Church remains the living eye-witness for the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the world today, just as it has been since the very beginning.

Despite the internal and external human corruption with which the Catholic Church has always contended, the truth of the church’s essential doctrines, dogmas, liturgies and devotions has miraculously, never been compromised.

The church remains the only infallible guide to a proper moral existence, although few within the church have actually managed to live up to that ideal. Those who are known to have have successfully done so are called “Saints”.

In addition to being The Universal Christian Church on Earth … the Catholic Church is also a sovereign nation-state, known as the Vatican. The Vatican constitutes the world’s oldest, continuously operating government (of any kind).

The Pope is the chief pastor and the leader of the Church, on earth. The holy office of the papacy was also established personally by Jesus Christ. St. Peter was the first pope … the “Rock” on which Jesus Christ would build his church. And lest anyone doubt this is indeed the case … the bones of St. Peter rest today, in an ancient cemetery, almost directly beneath the main altar of St. Peter’s basilica, in the Vatican. See also the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 16, verses 18 &19.

Endowed with the “Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven” … and the virtually unrestricted power of  “Binding and Loosing” … on earth and in heaven … the Pope wields truly awesome power and authority.

After the fall of Rome, the Catholic Church took it upon itself to rebuild western civilization in the image of heaven. And in many ways, it succeeded!

The Holy Bible remains a thoroughly Catholic book … preserved, compiled, translated, certified and infallibly endorsed as the totally inerrant, divinely inspired, written Word of God, by the Catholic Church alone … more than a thousand years before any other Christian church even existed.

There are more than 1.1 billion Catholics in the world, today.

Since its original institution in the early first century, the Catholic Church has consistently fulfilled its prophetic mission of saving souls and offering acceptable worship to God … something it never fails to do … every hour of every day … every day of every year … in every nation on earth.

Four “marks” serve to identify the authentic Catholic Church, from age to age:

1) One. The Catholic Church is unique: Jesus Christ founded only one church … the Catholic Church.

2) Holy. The Catholic Church is holy. With Jesus as its founder, the Holy Spirit as its perpetual advocate, and God the Father as its eternal patron, the Catholic Church belongs solely to God. Pure and spotless. Set apart for God’s purposes alone, the church can never be corrupted by sin, or by any other human fault.

3) Apostolic. The Catholic Church is apostolic. The divine power and authority given to the Catholic Church by Jesus Christ is passed down through the generations from the original apostles, to their duly ordained successors, the bishops. And so on.

4) Universal. The word “Catholic” means “universal”. Jesus Christ founded one church to be the universal sacrament of salvation for all.

There’s much, much more … but I think you probably get the idea.

The Catholic (School) Difference

In 2004 President George W. Bush spoke to Catholic Educators in Washington D.C. for the centennial celebration of the National Catholic Education Association.  He described Catholic education as a “noble calling” and praised our schools as “models for all schools around the country.”  He stated, “Catholic schools have a proven record of bringing out the best in every child, regardless of their background. And every school in America should live up to that standard.”

The United States Department of Education reported that Catholic School students are consistently high in reading, math, and science skills, and are especially effective in educating minority and low-income students.  Ninety-nine percent of Catholic secondary school students graduate, and 97% go on to post-secondary education.

During last year’s Catholic Schools Week, Bishop Paul Zipfel spoke of the value of a Catholic education during a Mass at our high school.  He explained that it is about so much more than just academic records.  “Research also shows that graduates of Catholic schools are more closely bonded to the Church, more deeply committed to adult religious practices, have better images of God, and exhibit a greater awareness of the responsibilities for moral decision making,” he stated.  “Although it never replaces the primary education that must take place in the home, it is one of the best investments we can make in the future faith of our children.”

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