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    Roman Catholic Church - Simple Guides
    Roman Catholic Church - Simple Guides
    Roman Catholic Church - Simple Guides
    Ebook198 pages1 hour

    Roman Catholic Church - Simple Guides

    By Edmund Hartley

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    About this ebook

    Understand the Roman Catholic Church with ease and informality. Gain valuable insights into key elements of the culture and way of life of its adherants. Presented in an accesible format with clearly recognized topics.

    This book will help you to appreciate the significance of one of the largest organized religions in the world to understand the history of the Church, and what it means to be Roman Catholic to recognize the Catholic Church's key practices and beliefs to avoid faux pas in conversation, in traveling and in personal relationships The Roman Catholic Church is the largest Christian denomination in the world.

    Although it has evolved over time and spread to every continent, its belief, structure and liturgy date back to the one Church founded by Christ. This personal introduction by an English priest, whose experience includes many years of service with the British army, is offered as one man's guide to the origins and practices of Catholic Christianity. The book considers the Jewish roots and historical context of Christianity. It traces the evolution of thought that culminated in the message of its founder, and the impact of Jesus' teachings on his followers. It recounts the history of the early Church, its aims and beliefs, and the formulation by the Church Fathers and the great ecumenical councils of answers to questions of faith, morals and teachings.

    Thematic chapters deal with the topics of faith and reason, how to recognize truth, authority, myth, the question of sin, judgement and deliverance, and the meaning of the sacraments. Others deal with historical events, changing attitudes, religious practices, institutional structures and sacred texts. Written in an informal and friendly style, this guide is the perfect introduction to a rich, complex and profoundly influential system of belief.

    Access the world's religions with Simple Guides: Religion a series of concise, accessible introductions to the world's major religions. Written by experts in the field, they offer an engaging and sympathetic description of the key concepts, beliefs and practices of different faiths. Ideal for spiritual seekers and travellers alike, Simple Guides aims to open the doors of perception. Together the books provide a reliable compass to the world's great spiritual traditions, and a point of reference for further exploration and discovery. By offering essential insights into the core values, customs and beliefs of different societies, they also enable visitors to be aware of the cultural sensibilities of their hosts, and to behave in a way that fosters mutual respect and understanding.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKuperard
    Release dateMay 1, 2009
    ISBN9781857336399
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      Book preview

      Roman Catholic Church - Simple Guides - Edmund Hartley

      HARTLEY

      Chapter 1

      Origins

      ‘The North Gate’s on your left as you go out; so turn right, then take the first on the left and go down to the T junction and look for an opening on your right between the shops.’ Totally enclosed by tall faded walls and a few steps down, a large courtyard emerged from out of the gloom. It was early morning. Looming across in the corner one could see two huge doorways under a Gothic arch. The one on the left was open; the other, closed up in the twelfth century, had not been opened since. At 5.30 a.m. all was dark inside save for three or four 40-watt light bulbs which hung down like glowing tassels. The only sound came from a dim corner where a monk with a white cloth cap on his dark head was chanting from a book on a desk. Oblivious to a stranger standing behind him in the darkness, he continued to read an old Coptic script by the light of the sputtering tallow candle he held in his hand. All around was dusty and unkempt. Behind him nondescript hangings curtained off a small apse which had been waiting – probably for months – to be refurbished.

      At 6.00 a.m. an organ started up somewhere in the shadows and drowned the monk’s dirge. This music accompanied a Latin rite procession which wandered away in the distance, to a remote altar. It felt like having stepped back in time. Here was altogether another world! Accustomed now to the gloom, I stood for an age where, for generations, other people have stood and wondered. This was a hallowed place which somehow cast its own particular spell … a spell that dissolved an hour or two later as I stepped out into the sunlight of the courtyard of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem.

      Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem

      Past, Present and Future?

      The past, rather like the future, is in the dark because it is not in the ‘here and now’. The sun shining today is much more important than it shining yesterday. We can only see stars when it is dark – because they are so small they show up better. In fact, when looking at a star we are looking into the past – since the light we now see left that star a thousand years ago. To look into our past we need some light. But the light we need is often insufficient. Hindsight is described as 20/20 vision – ‘the clearest way of seeing’. ‘The further away from the game the more we can see of the play’, when the overall picture becomes clearer. It is also said that ‘distance lends enchantment to the view’ – which is usually, but not always, true!

      In moving great boulders for building purposes, Bronze Age people found that felled trees, when rolling side by side, proved a useful means of transport; however, one does not suppose for a moment that anyone then thought ‘This is how they’ll eventually discover the wheel!’ It does seem, though, that the more we can see of the past, the greater the chance we have of understanding how and when things began. The less we know of the past, of course, the more difficult it is to answer certain queries – such as our present question: ‘What were the Origins of Catholicism?’ So we begin at the beginning, which is usually the best place to start …

      Roots in Judaism

      The primitive herdsman’s livelihood depends on his finding fresh grazing for his flock. He is dependent on knowing when and where it is going to rain next and, if he is down on his luck, he will look for someone to make it rain for him. Without understanding how the seasons work, our nomad will accept that, if he finds and make friends with the one who can make it rain, all will be well … and if the ‘rain-maker’ happens to be a god, so be it – it will not be long before he is ‘praying’ or ‘sacrificing something valuable’ in order to get this god to do what he wants. All types of religious belief and practice begin like this, and, as far as we can see, the origins of Christianity are no different from the origins of any other cult.

      Where there is a difference, it is that Christianity happens to be the development of a previous world religion which still exists: Judaism. One ought to say here that, to try to outline the origins of Christianity without already having looked at the origins of Judaism, would be like saying, because the sky is cloudy this morning, ‘The sun is not shining!’

      We cannot begin to understand Judaism without at the same time opening her Book. The Jewish Sacred Scriptures, known as the Holy Bible, proclaim the story of their ‘Beginnings’, honour their Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) and give the gradual development of their history as a nation. Genesis (the first word in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) is the first book of the Bible and it is the only direct source we have for the history of the Patriarchs, whose period is generally reckoned to be c.2000–1700 BC – the late Bronze Age.²

      It would be well to remember here that the Bible is the story of the beginning of things as seen by the Hebrew people. While it is probably the best known work of its kind, it is not the only one. The Semitic peoples, of which the Hebrews are one group, knew other traditions, some of which are no longer available to us – ancient sources, the existence of which can be traced in these Scriptures. What makes the ‘history’ in the Bible different from other ‘histories’ is that these writers disregarded anything that did not in some way relate to, or reflect upon, the development of their perceived relationship with their God. Such documented sources are to be found in museums, and so, although there is not much mention of them outside the Bible, the Patriarchs cannot just be the mythical characters that earlier scholarship thought them to be.

      Archaeology Can Be Helpful

      Archaeological discoveries in the Near East have shown that the biblical descriptions of the Patriarchs and their era are remarkably accurate – far too accurate, in fact, to be thought of as inventions, or to be dismissed as having no historical foundation. Hindsight tells us that it would not have been possible for such episodes to have been composed in that part of the world, the Near East, without some valid historical memory serving as a link with the past. We might begin to realize that these patriarchal traditions are not just or merely historical facts. They happen to belong to a type of literary genre that we would call ‘family tradition’. This means that they will have received a certain amount of ‘orientation’ in the course of their transmission from one generation to the next, uniting, as they obviously would, various and indeed disparate elements in the process. This last consideration, however, does not prevent us from placing the Patriarchs in their correct historical perspective in the light of literary and archaeological data available today.

      St Peter’s Basilica, built between 1506 and 1626. The dome was originally designed by Michelangelo to be the culminating point over the tomb of St Peter

      The Patriarchs are the first of a line of people, including kings, military leaders, priests, prophets, rebels, seers (each generation producing its own) who, over roughly the next seventeen hundred years, look forward to an age of peace and prosperity. It will take another thousand years for these people, beginning again with the Patriarchs, to find out, after all, that there is only one God – and, surprise, surprise, this God would be the God of the Hebrews … and it would be this God who would somehow bring about this peace!

      From about 1720 BC, however, the Hebrews had a few generations of a somewhat contrary experience, ending up as slaves, in Egypt. There they became familiar with the Egyptian religion with all its gods: Osiris, Isis with son Horus – the reigning Pharaoh sharing his divinity – with temples at Memphis and Karnak, etc. Aristotle, much later (300 BC) in Greece, was ninety before he came to realize that there could only be one God. A pagan, he had somehow managed to reason this out on his own without the benefit of such material as the Hebrew Scriptures.

      Greek Influence

      Greek thinking had a considerable impact on the transmission of biblical material in the early years of Christianity. After all, King Ptolemy II Philadelphus had commissioned the first translation of the Hebrew biblical scrolls into Greek (round about 270 BC) for his library in Alexandria. This translation is known as the Septuagint.

      ‘FISH’ – A Christian Symbol

      , pronounced ‘ikthus (below in Roman script) – is an acronym for the following:

      Chapter 2

      History

      The Catholic Church is Christian and Christianity, like Judaism, of which it considers itself the fulfilment, is an historical religion. It is possible to trace its roots back into the past, just as it is possible to trace any evolving phenomena. Latin and Greek commentators of that time have traced Jewish and Christian movements in the early years, and their writings often support records

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