THINGS CATHOLICS DO NOT BELIEVE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVI, Issue 3, 20 May 1898, Page 24

THINGS CATHOLICS DO NOT BELIEVE.

THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY TELLS BRIEFLY WHAT THEY ARE.

" 1. They do not believe that there is any other mediator of redemption than Jesus Christ. ' For there is no other name given to man whereby he must be saved.' When they call the mother of God, or any saint, a mediator, it is not in the sense of a mediator of redemption attributed to our Saviour, but in the sense of intercessor or pleader between God and his fellow-man, as Abraham, Moses and St. Paul praying to God for the people. " 2. Catholics do not believe that the Virgin Mary is in anyway equal or even comparable to God, for, being only a creature, although most highly favoured, she is infinitely less than God, who created her. Nor do they claim for her any power beyond that which she derives from God ; for she is entirely dependent on God for her privileges, her grace and her glory. "2. Catholics do not believe that there is any power on this earth or in heaven that can give permission to commit the least sin ; or that a sin can be forgiven for money ; or any indulgence granted for the commission of sin, either past present or future, or that a priest, bishop, cardinal or Pope can give valid absolution to a sinner who does nut truly repent by sincere sorrow, and truly resolve to abandon sin for all time to come, and amend his life and make reparation to God and his neighbour for the offence committed. " 4. Catholics do not believe that any man can obtain salvation by hia own good deels, independently or the merits and passion of Jesus Christ and His grace, or that he can make any satisfaction for the guilt of his sins, or acquire any merits except through the Saviour. " ."3. Catholics do not believe that it is allowable to break a lawful oath or tell a lie, even for the conversion of a kingdom, or to do anything whatever of a sinful nature to promote the supposed interests ot their Church. The false and pernicious principle that 'the end justifies the means' or that one may do evil that good may come, is utterly condemned by the Catholic Church. •' (i. Catholics do not believe that Protestants who are baptised, who lead a good life, love God and their neighbour, who avoid evil and do good, who are blamelessly ignorant of Catholic truth, and of the just claims of the Catholic Church to be the only true religion, are excluded from heaven, provided they believe there is one God in three Divine persons (or unity in trinity and trinity in unity) ; that God will reward the good and punish the bad hereafter ; that Jesus is the Son of God, made man, who redeemed us, and in Whom we must trust for our salvation, and provided they thoroughly repent of having ever by their sins offended God. '• 7. Catholics hold that Protestants who have these dispofcitions, and who have no suspicion of their religion being false, and no means of discovering, or tail in honest endeavours to discover the true religion, and who are so disposed in their hearts that they would, at any cost, embrace the Roman Catholic religion if they knew it to be the true one, are Catholics in spirit, and in some sense within the Catholic Church, without themselves knowing it. These Christians belong and are united to the 'soul,' as it is called, of the Catholic Church, although they are not united to the visible body ot the Church by external communion with her, and by the outward profession of her faith. Many Protestants from early education and false teaching about Catholics^ were righteously indignant at Catholics' belief, but on ascertaining the truth from Catholic sources became members of the much maligned Church. Among such men may be reckoned Cardinal Newman, who

believed and to the age of thirty-seven preached that the Pope is anti-Christ, and Earl Spencer (afterwards Father Ignatius), who the Catholic Church so vigorously when he was a clergyman of the English Church that his own father implored him to speak less violently of Catholics and exercise religious toleration. ''8. Catholics do not believe that it is in the power of their Church to add to the truths contained in the ' deposit of faith ' ; that is to frame or enforce any doctrine which has not for its source the written or unwritten word of God, or authority from the same. Nor do they believe, when the Church makes a definition in matters of faith, as for instance the Immaculate Conception of Mary, or the infallibil ; ty of the Pope in matters oL faith aud moral*, it L a new doctrine; it bpinsr only a solemn declaration and a clearer statement of what was believed, at least implicitly (that is, in an implied way, or inferentially) in the time of the Apostles, though some private person might have doubted it. " Catholics do not believe many other things not here enumerated, and on examination of the Catholic doctrine as taught and promulgated by the Church many things which appear strange to non-Catholics can be readily ascertained to be founded on revealed religion, human reason and common sense."