Time Immortal

Does the Roman Catholic Church teaches that faith alone in Christ is all that is necessary for salvation?

Does the Roman Catholic Church not teach that according to Roman Catholicism, man cannot be saved by faith alone in Christ alone?

Do they not teach that a Christian must rely on faith plus “meritorious works” in order to be saved?

Is it essential to the Roman Catholic doctrine of salvation that one participate in the Seven Sacraments, which are: Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance [also called Reconciliation], Annointing of the Sick, Holy Orders, and Matrimony?

These will be the first four questions answered in what I hope will become an ongoing series. In truth, I’d prefer to answer only the first three at this time, but there’s a problem with that. Catholic doctrine is not a series of atomic statements, but rather a unified body of teachings that build off of, play into, and complement and enhance each other. In other words, and more plainly put, it would be impossible to discuss what the Church teaches about salvation without discussing, at least in brief, the various Sacraments of the Church.

But before we begin, let’s look at the short answers to each of the above questions:

1. If you mean: do Catholics acknowledge sola fides as it is commonly articulated? No.
2. If you mean: do Catholics reject sola fide as it is commonly articulated? Yes.
3. No. A more appropriate term would simply be “merit.”
4. No, not all of those seven.

Now, let’s unpack those answers a little bit, shall we?

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The talented author reminds us once again that the arguments of the New Atheists (Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris, to name but four) are nothing new. The only two good arguments for atheism were done away with by St. Thomas Aquinas some 900 years ago…and all the New Atheists have to offer is rehashings of old, already useless arguments.

Seventy-thousand eyewitnesses (including atheists and skeptics) to the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima are told by the stay-at-home dogmatist that it was spontaneous mass hallucination unprecedented in history.

People who have experienced scientifically documented and inexplicable healings at Lourdes are commanded by New Atheists to believe they are victims or perpetrators of some sort of unnamed “excess.”

A Host begins bleeding human blood at a Mass in Betania, Venezuela, and the whole thing is caught on video by an ordinary tourist? Conspiracy and trick photography, despite the fact that the Host (still preserved in a monstrance after being subjected rigorous tests) continues to bleed now and then to this day.

And when the resolve to Just Not Look begins to crumble under the suspicion there might be something to the supernatural after all, the solution is “Pop in a DVD of the Amazing Randi or Penn and Teller debunking something and repeat to yourself ‘Some claims of the supernatural are bunk, therefore all are.’”

Atheists might have had a chance at convincing me that my faith was just superstitious bunk back in my early teens, when I was having the obligatory adolescent crisis of doubt. Fortunately, someone hooked me up with a copy of the Summa Theologica, and there was never again any risk that I’d fall in to such lunacy.