Test All Things
Jesus made Peter the first Pope and bestowed upon him and his successors authority and an apostolic succession.
The Catholic Catechism, which contains some 2,865 articles.
Encyclicals: letters from the Popes to all the bishops of the church.
Various writings of saints and various sayings of apparitions.
All of the following quotes are from the Catholic Catechism they are each preceded by the number by which they are designated and found within the Catechism.
841 "The Church's relationship with the Muslims. The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankinds judge on the last day."
830 "The word catholic means universal, in the sense of according to the totality or in keeping with the whole. The Church is catholic in a double sense: First, the Church is catholic because Christ is present in her. Where there is Christ Jesus, there is the Catholic Church. In her subsists the fullness of Christ's body united with its head; this implies that she receives from him the fullness of the means of salvation which he has willed: correct and complete confession of faith, full sacramental life, and ordained ministry in apostolic succession. The Church was, in this fundamental sense, catholic on the day of Pentecost and will always be so until the day of the Parousia."
1471 "The doctrine and practice of indulgences in the Church are closely linked to the effects of the sacrament of Penance. What is an indulgence? An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints. An indulgence is partial or plenary according as it removes either part or all of the temporal punishment due to sin. Indulgences may be applied to the living or the dead."
966 "the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death"
2025 "We can have merit in Gods sight only because of Gods free plan to associate man with the work of his grace. Merit is to be ascribed in the first place to the grace of God, and secondly to mans collaboration. Mans merit is due to God."
820 "Christ bestowed unity on his Church from the beginning. This unity, we believe, subsists in the Catholic Church as something she can never lose, and we hope that it will continue to increase until the end of time."
982 "There is no offense, however serious, that the Church cannot forgive. There is no one, however wicked and guilty, who may not confidently hope for forgiveness, provided his repentance is honest. Christ who died for all men desires that in his Church the gates of forgiveness should always be open to anyone who turns away from sin."
1493 "One who desires to obtain reconciliation with God and with the Church, must confess to a priest all the unconfessed grave sins he remembers after having carefully examined his conscience. The confession of venial faults, without being necessary in itself, is nevertheless strongly recommended by the Church."
1497 "Individual and integral confession of grave sins followed by absolution remains the only ordinary means of reconciliation with God and with the Church."
200 "These are the words with which the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed begins. The confession of God's oneness, which has its roots in the divine revelation of the Old Covenant, is inseparable from the profession of Gods existence and is equally fundamental. God is unique; there is only one God: The Christian faith confesses that God is one in nature, substance and essence."
237 "The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God. To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israels faith before the Incarnation of Gods Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit."
257 "O blessed light, O Trinity and first Unity! God is eternal blessedness, undying life, unfading light. God is love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God freely wills to communicate the glory of his blessed life. Such is the plan of his loving kindness, conceived by the Father before the foundation of the world, in his beloved Son: He destined us in love to be his sons and to be conformed to the image of his Son, through the spirit of sonship. This plan is a grace [which] was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, stemming immediately from Trinitarian love. It unfolds in the work of creation, the whole history of salvation after the fall, and the missions of the Son and the Spirit, which are continued in the mission of the Church."
308 "The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator. God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes: For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Far from diminishing the creatures dignity, this truth enhances it. Drawn from nothingness by Gods power, wisdom and goodness, it can do nothing if it is cut off from its origin, for without a Creator the creature vanishes. Still less can a creature attain its ultimate end without the help of Gods grace."
449 "By attributing to Jesus the divine title Lord, the first confessions of the Churchs faith affirm from the beginning that the power, honor and glory due to God the Father are due also to Jesus, because he was in the form of God, and the Father manifested the sovereignty of Jesus by raising him from the dead and exalting him into his glory."
2466 "In Jesus Christ, the whole of Gods truth has been made manifest. Full of grace and truth, he came as the light of the world, he is the Truth. Whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. The disciple of Jesus continues in his word so as to know the truth [that] will make you free and that sanctifies. To follow Jesus is to live in the Spirit of truth, whom the Father sends in his name and who leads into all the truth. To his disciples Jesus teaches the unconditional love of truth: Let what you say be simply Yes or No."
685 "To believe in the Holy Spirit is to profess that the Holy Spirit is one of the persons of the Holy Trinity, consubstantial with the Father and the Son: with the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. For this reason, the divine mystery of the Holy Spirit was already treated in the context of Trinitarian theology."
152 "One cannot believe in Jesus Christ without sharing in his Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who reveals to men who Jesus is. For no one can say Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit, who searches everything, even the depths of God. No one comprehends the thoughts of God, except the Spirit of God. Only God knows God completely: we believe in the Holy Spirit because he is God."
494 "As St. Irenaeus says, Being obedient she [Mary] became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race."
968 "In a wholly singular way she [Mary] cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope and burning charity in the Saviours work of restoring supernatural life to souls. For this reason she is a mother to us in the order of grace."
458 "The Word became flesh so that thus we might know Gods love: In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."
966 "The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Sons ResurrectionIn giving birth you kept your virginityYou conceived the living God and, by your prayers, will deliver our souls from death."
969 "Taken up to heaven she [Mary] did not lay aside this saving office but by her manifold intercession continues to bring us gifts of eternal salvationTherefore the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the titles of Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix."
1099 "The Spirit and the Church cooperate to manifest Christ and his work of salvation in the liturgy. Primarily in the Eucharist, and by analogy in the other sacraments, the liturgy is the memorial of the mystery of salvation. The Holy Spirit is the Churchs living memory."
1534 "Two other sacraments, Holy Orders and Matrimony, are directed towards the salvation of others; if they contribute as well to personal salvation, it is through service to others that they do so. They confer a particular mission in the Church and serve to build up the People of God."
169 "Salvation comes from God alone; but because we receive the life of faith through the Church, she is our mother: We believe the Church as the mother of our new birth, and not in the Church as if she were the author of our salvation. Because she is our mother, she is also our teacher in the faith."
161 "Believing in Jesus Christ and in the One who sent him for our salvation is necessary for obtaining that salvation. Since without faith it is impossible to please [God] and to attain to the fellowship of his sons, therefore without faith no one has ever attained justification, nor will anyone obtain eternal life But he who endures to the end."
964 "Marys role in the Church is inseparable from her union with Christ and flows directly from it. This union of the mother with the Son in the work of salvation is made manifest from the time of Christs virginal conception up to his death; it is made manifest above all at the hour of his Passion:enduring with her only begotten Son the intensity of his suffering, joining herself with his sacrifice in her mothers heart, and lovingly consenting to the immolation of this victim, born of her: to be given."
1367 "The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice: The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priest, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different. In this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and offered in an unbloody manner."
1035 "The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, eternal fire. The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs."
499 "The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Marys real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christs birth did not diminish his mothers virginal integrity but sanctified it. And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the Ever-virgin."
723 "In Mary, the Holy Spirit fulfills the plan of the Father's loving goodness. Through the Holy Spirit, the Virgin conceives and gives birth to the Son of God. By the Holy Spirits power and her faith, her virginity became uniquely fruitful."
421 "Christians believe that the world has been established and kept in being by the Creators love; has fallen into slavery to sin but has been set free by Christ, crucified and risen to break the power of the evil one."
393 "It is the irrevocable character of their choice, and not a defect in the infinite divine mercy, that makes the angels sin unforgivable. There is no repentance for the angels after their fall, just as there is no repentance for men after death."
1609 "In his mercy God has not forsaken sinful man. The punishments consequent upon sin, pain in childbearing and toil in the sweat of your brow, also embody remedies that limit the damaging effects of sin. After the fall, marriage helps to overcome self-absorption, egoism, pursuit of ones own pleasure, and to open oneself to the other, to mutual aid and to self-giving."
1854 "Sins are rightly evaluated according to their gravity. The distinction between mortal and venial sin, already evident in Scripture, became part of the tradition of the Church. It is corroborated by human experience."
1263 "By Baptism all sins are forgiven, original sin and all personal sins, as well as all punishment for sin. In those who have been reborn nothing remains that would impede their entry into the Kingdom of God, neither Adams sin, nor personal sin, nor the consequences of sin, the gravest of which is separation from God."
1850 "Sin is an offense against God: Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in your sight. Sin sets itself against Gods love for us and turns our hearts away from it. Like the first sin, it is disobedience, a revolt against God through the will to become like gods, knowing and determining good and evil. Sin is thus love of oneself even to contempt of God. In this proud self-exaltation, sin is diametrically opposed to the obedience of Jesus, which achieves our salvation."
1863 "Venial sin weakens charity; it manifests a disordered affection for created goods; it impedes the souls progress in the exercise of the virtues and the practice of the moral good; it merits temporal punishment. Deliberate and unrepented venial sin disposes us little by little to commit mortal sin. However venial sin does not break the covenant with God. With Gods grace it is humanly reparable. Venial sin does not deprive the sinner of sanctifying grace, friendship with God, charity, and consequently eternal happiness. While he is in the flesh, man cannot help but have at least some light sins. But do not despise these sins which we call light: if you take them for light when you weigh them, tremble when you count them. A number of light objects makes a great mass; a number of drops fills a river; a number of grains makes a heap. What then is our hope? Above all, confession."
1857 "For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent."
1855 "Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of Gods law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him. Venial sin allows charity to subsist, even though it offends and wounds it."
108 "the Christian faith is not a religion of the book. Christianity is the religion of the Word of God, a word which is not a written and mute word, but the Word is incarnate and living. If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, open [our] minds to understand the Scriptures."
100 "The task of interpreting the Word of God authentically has been entrusted solely to the Magisterium of the Church, that is, to the Pope and to the bishops in communion with him."
80 "Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine well-spring, come together in some fashion to form one thing and move towards the same goal. Each of them makes present and fruitful in the Church the mystery of Christ, who promised to remain with his own always, to the close of the age. [Mt 28:20]"
846 "How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body: Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it [LG 14; cf. Mk 16:16; Jn 3:5]."
847 "This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church: Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation."[337]
105 "God is the author of Sacred Scripture. The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself."
106 "God inspired the human authors of the sacred books. To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more.
107 "The inspired books teach the truth. Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures."
1006 "It is in regard to death that mans condition is most shrouded in doubt. In a sense bodily death is natural, but for faith it is in fact the wages of sin. For those who die in Christs grace it is a participation in the death of the Lord, so that they can also share his Resurrection."
1008 "Death is a consequence of sin. The Churchs Magisterium, as authentic interpreter of the affirmations of Scripture and Tradition, teaches that death entered the world on account of mans sin. Even though mans nature is mortal God had destined him not to die. Death was therefore contrary to the plans of God the Creator and entered the world as a consequence of sin. Bodily death, from which man would have been immune had he not sinned is thus the last enemy of man left to be conquered."
732 "On that day, the Holy Trinity is fully revealed. Since that day, the Kingdom announced by Christ has been open to those who believe in him: in the humility of the flesh and in faith, they already share in the communion of the Holy Trinity. By his coming, which never ceases, the Holy Spirit causes the world to enter into the last days, the time of the Church, the Kingdom already inherited though not yet consummated. We have seen the true Light, we have received the heavenly Spirit, we have found the true faith: we adore the indivisible Trinity, who has saved us."
673 "Since the Ascension Christs coming in glory has been imminent, even though it is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. This eschatological coming could be accomplished at any moment, even if both it and the final trial that will precede it are delayed."
676 "The Antichrists deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the intrinsically perverse political form of a secular messianism."