My Catholic View Of The Bible example essay topic

950 words
Catholics go through a cycle of events in their spiritual lives known as the seven sacraments. Although all Catholics can not partake in each sacrament, the majority receive the Holy Eucharist and are baptized as children. The sacraments are the rites of passage in the Catholic faith. Some of the sacraments require proper preparation and knowledge of the one's faith. The seven sacraments include Baptism, Eucharist, Confirmation, Reconciliation, Marriage, Anointing of the Sick, and the Holy Orders.

Faith ties the people of God together. We are united through our belief in faith. I see the sacraments as the acceptance of faith in God and of our faith. With all the diversity that exists among God's people, faith in God and To Christan, Jesus Christ is the being that connects us all as one.

He played many roles when he was on this earth and is the incarnation of God. In essence, He is God "in fleshed". While he was on the earth, some viewed him as a healer. I believe that receiving reconciliation and the anointing of the sick would require an individual to accept Jesus as the ultimate healer.

The Eucharist accepts that Jesus had the ability to turn bread and wine into himself for his people. Receiving the Eucharist is the acceptance of the Last Supper and the symbolic meaning along with it. Jesus Christ is referred to as the anointed. At baptism we are anointed with holy oil to welcome us into the Catholic faith. In confirmation we again, confirm and renew our faith and individually commit to the vows our godparents had spoken for us. Again we are anointed with holy oil, symbolizing the truth of Jesus Christ, the anointed one.

The sacraments are a rite of passage among the Christian people. We are all tied to one faith and the sacraments are the links that we tie it all together. Sacraments sometimes required preparation. In preparation of a sacrament, we are taught the underlining faith of Jesus Christ.

Through our sacramental practices, we accept and acknowledge the faith of Jesus and who he was. Sacraments bring people of the church together in celebration. These gatherings are common ties among people of faith and their acceptance of God and Jesus. What do catholics and fundamentalist believe about the bible comparison 2000-07-04 Conversations about the differences and similarities between Fundamentalist and Catholic beliefs usually end up being more like heated debates than conversations. A major difference between the Catholic and the Fundamentalist is how they see the Bible.

The source of the Fundamentalists^aEURTM faith is the Bible. But what do the Fundamentalists believe about the Bible? This is the question I am trying to answer for myself. I will present my understanding of the Fundamentalists^aEURTM view of the Bible along with my Catholic view of the Bible. My mission is not to offend, but to open a dialogue between the two views. I know from experience that this is a very touchy topic.

The best way to go about conversing with someone of different beliefs, I believe, is to see their belief in its best light. I believe it is important to develop a sense of respect for the variety of ways people experience the divine in the lives. Keeping that in mind, I give you my interpretation of the Fundamentalist and the Catholic view of the Bible. Both Catholics and Fundamentalists agree that the Bible is a divinely inspired, infallible, and authoritative means for people to know Christ. There are some distinctions between the Catholics^aEURTM and the Fundamentalists^aEURTM view of the Bible.

Both Catholics and Fundamentalists believe the Bible to be inspired by God; they believe the Bible to be the Word of God. Fundamentalists place most of their emphasis on God as the author of the bible. They do not pay much attention to the human side of the Bible^aEURTMs authorship. Fundamentalists believe in total word-for-word inspiration of the Bible. The Catholic Church does not teach that God merely dictated words to the human authors of the Bible. To the Catholic the Bible is the Word of God and the work of human beings.

Catholics are encouraged to look for the meaning a human writer of a book of the Bible was trying to get across. To really understand what the writer is telling us, we must know something about the time in which he lived his mode of thinking, and the manners of expression people of his time used. It is difficult to accept the Fundamentalist view of word-for-word inspiration for several reasons. There are no books of the Bible that are the original, autographed works of the authors.

Christianity existed hundreds of years before the Bible itself was completed. Many translations of the Bible are not translations at all, but more like interpretations or paraphrases. Translators might imagine what the original author would have written if he had been writing in Modern English, rather than just translating the actual words the original author had written. Fundamentalists and Catholics believe the Bible to be infallible, or free from error. Catholics do not consider the Bible necessarily grammatically, mathematically, or scientifically infallible. Only the message of the Bible is considered to be without error.

Fundamentalists take the idea of the Bible^aEURTMs infallibility a step farther with their confidence in Martin Luther^aEURTMs theory of sola scripture, Latin for ^aEURoescripture alone^a EUR.