IF YOU ARE ALWAYS CATHOLIC THAT DOES NOT MEAN YOU CAN'T BE A FAKE
CATHOLIC
A BELIEVING CATHOLIC
Even if you agree with once Catholic always Catholic that does not mean you can
be labelled Catholic.
The Catholic idea is that baptism marks you forever as a member of the Church. You can be a member of the Smith family and lose any right to call yourself a Smith or be treated as one. It is like you are Smith only in your DNA which does not amount to much. Your Smith label is not accurate though it is not completely wrong.
THREE WAYS
If you are Catholic,
There are three ways of being Catholic (these apply to being a member of any
religion) -
* You can be Catholic by affiliation by having your name on its books because of
an initiation. That would be over-legalistic.
For Catholics, you can be affiliated in the eyes of the Church but in the eyes
of God you might not be Catholic at all - for example, if your baptism for some
reason was invalid. So only God knows who is really baptised and initiated into
the Church.
* You can be Catholic by belief.
* You can be Catholic socially.
All are necessary to be fully Catholic. If you have not been formally initiated
into the Church and think you have been you may be Catholic by belief and
socially but not really. Even if it is true that you are Catholic for life, it
is not true that you can be a believing Catholic for life. You would be Catholic
by membership but not Catholic by belief.
Most Catholics do not support the teachings of the Church.
They cut themselves off the community united by faith. The Church decrees this.
As harsh as it looks, the decree is only recognising the truth. It is actually
respecting their choice. A Church is a community of faith and you must have its
faith to be part of the community.
Catholics picking what they like out of the faith is not enough to make them
Catholic. Even atheists do that. Decent persons will not want to be counted
among an organisation whose beliefs they do not support. This need not be
spiteful. For the church to count them as members is dishonest and disrespectful
to them. Likewise, for them to be able to represent themselves as a Catholic is
disingenuous and not fair to real Catholics. The Church teaches you
excommunicate yourself when you commit certain offences so you cease to become
Catholic when you become convinced the Church is false. Also, if the Church is
false then being Catholic is certainly only a label. It is only a man-made label
conferred by a man-made faith.
A person can be Catholic by initiation through baptism but not a Catholic by
faith. Without faith you are not a real member of the faith community. The
Catholic who refuses to believe what he is supposed to believe is like the
Protestant who selects what he wants out of the Catholic faith for the result
will be a new faith that borrows from the old. The Protestants merely followed
the Catholic structure and maintained it until they were thrown out. They called
themselves Roman Catholics but were they really? No.
The liberal Catholic confuses having the right granted by the Church to have
differing views on some matters such as Church discipline and Church politics
etc with a right to reject the teaching of the Church. He denies that the Church
has a right to be a Church and to bind and obligate members to believe certain
things or at least to try to believe. They like to call themselves dissidents
which has a better ring to it than the truth which is that they should call
themselves heretics or rejecters of required Church teaching. The liberal
Catholic surrenders not to the Catholic authorities in Catholic teaching but to
the secularist values of the age or to Protestant values. He has to surrender -
whether uncritically or not - to some authority and he will not let it be the
Church - at least beyond a point.
The liberal "Catholics" confuse atheists and believers about what the Church
teaches and that is disgraceful. One liberal disagrees with the next about
rights. They may claim that they espouse commonly agreed rights. But who
decides? The majority of the people? The opinion polls? The politicians. Rights
will clash. Even those who say that morality and rights are just opinions and
its intolerant to argue that they are more than that must confess that they are
still promoting intolerance. If rights are just opinions then what if there is a
clash of rights? The only solution is a might is right attitude that produces
legal battles and even bloodshed.
CATHOLIC CATECHISM EXPLAINS THAT NOT ALL CATHOLICS ARE REAL CATHOLICS
From The Catechism Explained:
A Catholic is one who has been baptized and professes himself to be a member
of the Catholic Church.
The Church is a community into which admittance is gained by Baptism. Thus the
three thousand baptized on the first Pentecost became members of the Church
(Acts ii. 41). Moreover a man must make external profession of being a member of
the Church, so that any one who breaks away, for instance, by heresy, no longer
belongs to the Church in spite of his baptism, though he is not thereby freed
from his obligations to the Church. Neither heathens, Jews, heretics, nor
schismatics are members of the Church (Council of Florence), though children
baptized validly in other communions really belong to it. " For," as St.
Augustine says, " Baptism is the privilege of the true Church, and so the
benefits which flow from Baptism are necessarily fruits which belong only to the
true Church. Children baptized in other communions cease to be members of the
Church only when, after reaching the age of reason, they make formal profession
of heresy, as, for example, by receiving communion in a non-Catholic church."
The Christians were at first known by the name of Nazareans, from Nazareth, or
Galileans, from Galilee; it was first in Antioch that the name Christian came to
be in use (Acts xi. 26), and the name Christians is appropriate. We are
followers of Christ, willing to be conformed to the image of Christ (Rom. viii.
29). " We receive our name," says St. John Chrysostom, " not from an earthly
ruler, nor from an angel, nor from an archangel, nor from a seraphim, but from
the King of all the earth."
A true Catholic is not only one who has been baptized and belongs to the Church,
but who also makes serious efforts to secure his eternal salvation; who believes
the teaching of the Church, keeps the commandments of God, and of the Church,
who receives the sacraments, and prays to God in the manner
prescribed by Christ.
He is not a true Christian who is ignorant of his faith. Such a one might as
well call himself a doctor though knowing nothing of medicine. " ISTor is he a
true Christian," says St. Justin, " who does not live as Christ taught him to
live." Our Lord said to the Jews : " If you be the children of Abraham do the
works of Abraham " (John viii. 39), and He might say to the Christians "If you
be Christians do the works of Christ." " If you want to be a Christian," says
St. Gregory Nazianzen, " you must live the life of Christ ;" and St. Augustine :
" A true Christian is the man who is gentle, good, and merciful to all, and
shares his bread with the poor." Christ Himself said that His disciples should
be known by their love one for another (John xiii. 35). A Christian who neglects
the sacraments is like a soldier who has no weapons ; what a responsibility he
incurs ! Louis of Granada says, " A field which is well tended is expected to
yield a richer harvest ; so more good works are expected from a Christian than
from a heathen, because the Christian has greater graces.
End of quote.
EXCOMMUNICATION
Canon Law decrees a penalty of automatic excommunication for those who say they
disbelieve or reject an infallible doctrine of the Church. For example, if you
are a Catholic and you say the Pope is not the head of the Church or that
marriage is a load of bollocks you are excommunicated. You are barred from the
sacraments and the right to hold Church office. You are barred from the
sacraments and from holding office in the Church for sinning as well. To
contradict the Church is a sin. So does this all mean that being excommunicated
for heresy is no different at all from just being a sinner? A sinner can be a
member of the Church even though barred from the sacraments and the right to
hold Church office if the sin is serious enough. A heretic cannot. The heretic
is not excommunicated because he or she is a sinner and has committed the sin of
heresy. The heretic is excommunicated because in heresy one repudiates the
teaching authority of the Church and denies that the Church is teacher thus the
excommunication declares that the heretic has put oneself outside the Church and
is not a member. Those Catholics who contradict the Church cease to be Catholics
for they are expelled by excommunication.
To put it another way, the Church says I cut myself off from the sacraments by
sinning. So if I get excommunicated I will be no better or worse off. So what is
the point of excommunication? It is like sacking your employee who has walked
out of the job. It would be vindictive. It would show you spitefully want rid.
The only way around this is to consider the fact that excommunicate means you
are not in communion or union with the Church anymore. Excommunication puts you
out of unity with the Church.
A religion that declares people who have undergone some ritual are members even
if they don't believe and no matter what they do is not even loyal to itself. It
is self-destruction. The Christian faith would disappear if baptism made you a
member of the Church and what you believed and did made no difference. What
would you say to the man who upon hearing of Muhammad said he was a Muslim and
made no effort to join the Islamic community and said he didn't believe Muhammad
was a prophet and didn't believe in the Koran?
You could say nothing if you think faith and genuine membership of a religion
don't necessarily go together. If they don't, then the Catholic has the right to
claim to be Catholic while saying the Mass is rubbish and nobody should attend
it. He would be whatever he called himself? What then if he decided that he was
pope?
OFFICIAL TEACHING SAYS YOU CAN LEAVE THE CHURCH
The Church does not teach "Once a Catholic Always a Catholic". The view that
once a Catholic always a Catholic is popular among Catholics but does not fit
Catholic teaching or canon law. The Church says that strictly speaking there is
only Catholic baptism. A Protestant unknowingly receives a Catholic baptism when
she is baptised in the Protestant Church. But she is not regarded as subject to
Canon Law. Nobody in their right mind would hold that if she joined the Catholic
Church and thus came under Canon Law for five minutes and then went back to
Protestantism that once a Catholic always a Catholic is true.
Jesus himself did not believe the doctrine of once a Jew always a Jew for he
claimed that the bad Jews were not children of Abraham - in other words not real
Jews at all. His Church claimed to be the new and updated Judaism thus if once a
Jew then always a Jew is wrong so is once a Catholic then a Catholic forever. He
said that he was the vine and if a branch does not bear fruit it will be cut off
and destroyed. The apostle John wrote of believers who joined the Church and
left and stated that they never really belonged. The Bible does not teach that
you can be a member of God's visible organisation forever no matter what you do.
But how does this fit the Bible teaching that once saved always saved? That
doctrine does not imply that you are a member of God's people no matter what you
do. It only means you will still go to Heaven if you reject the Church and God.
A Catholic book, Unicorn in the Sanctuary - The Impact of the New Age on the
Catholic Church states on page 97, "Is the Christian path the only way to
achieve eternal life with God? Or are other religions valid prescriptions for
other peoples? Are Hinduism, Buddhism, Mormonism and African religions valid
paths to God? Let me be clear that when I speak of a Hindu, I mean one who
practices orthodox Hindu religion. In the same way, a Mormon is one who follows
the teachings of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. If a person calls himself a
Mormon, claims allegiance to Joseph Smith, but does not believe that God the
Father is a flesh and blood man or that Jesus and Lucifer were brothers, then
that person is not an orthodox Mormon. If, instead, he ignores these doctrines,
and begins to believe that Jesus Christ is the only-begotten Son of God who came
to die for his sins, but still calls himself a Mormon, then we would find it
difficult to consider him still a Mormon." The same would be true of
Catholicism. Catholics believe you need a valid baptism and when you are old
enough to decide for yourself you need to adhere to the entire Catholic faith to
be a real Catholic.
The Church says that Catholic Church is in Heaven and on earth and in Purgatory.
The Church does not believe that the people in Hell are to be counted members of
the Church even if they carry the baptism mark.
In Canon Law you are a lapsed Catholic if you don't practice and you become a
non-Catholic if you convert to another religion. The Church accepts the concept
of apostasy, Catholics ceasing to be Catholics. The Church teaches that you
always belong to the Church if you are baptised but that is not the same as
saying you will always be a member. If you belong to Jesus, that does not mean
you are a member of his Church no matter what you believe and do. A dog may
belong in my house and not be there and wander off and be lost. A sheep may
belong to the flock and the flock may be waiting the lost sheep coming back even
though the sheep will no longer be a member of the flock. The once a Catholic
always a Catholic kind of attitude is a boast that this organisation, the
Catholic Church is so special that it can hardly be considered to be a human
organisation but divine. You don't say that if somebody is a member of a club
they are always a member. You don't say once a doctor always a doctor. Since you
don't, if you say once a Catholic always a Catholic then you don't put as much
value on being a doctor as being a Catholic and that is bigoted and fanatical
and downright evil. You are saying an initiation rite that makes Catholics is
more important than a man studying and working to help others.
If you can be received into the Catholic Church if you are validly baptised a
Protestant, then you can certainly reverse this reception. You can become
un-received. You can leave the Church. You can formally defect. Canon Law speaks
of formal defection from the Catholic Church and recognises it.
From the Encyclical Satis Cognitum Pope Leo XIII: "There can be nothing more
dangerous than those heretics who admit who admit nearly the whole cycle of
doctrine, yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple
faith taught by Our Lord and handed down by apostolic tradition - Augustine. The
practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous
teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion,
and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point
of doctrine proposed by her authorative magisterium. St Augustine notes that
heresies may spring up, not to a single one of which should anyone give his
assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. Augustine in De
Haeresibus n. 88 wrote that there may be or may arise some heresies and that if
anybody holds to a single one of these he is not a Catholic."
Pope Eugene IV, Council of Florence, 1441: “The Holy Roman Church condemns,
reproves, anathematizes and declares to be outside the Body of Christ, which is
the Church, the heretic for he holds opposing or contrary views.”
Church law (until 2010) decrees that it can be possible to defect from the
Church. Those who say the practice of formal defection exempts the Catholic only
from marriage law - like the Church letting a rebellious child have its own way
- need to consider the following. If the Church can exempt from matrimonial law
it can exempt from all of Church law or canon law. Also, defection means leaving
the Church. To say it lets you marry as you wish without regard to the Church is
ridiculous. It is like saying sacking somebody from their job only means you
will give them no bonus at Christmas anymore. And most defectors are not
interested in getting married at all. And matrimonial law in the Church is said
to be moral law not just judicial law. For example, the Church cannot exempt you
so that you can contract a new marriage while your first spouse is still alive.
To attempt such an exemption would be invalid. Church law is overridden by
divine law.
Those who say Once a Catholic Always a Catholic are often not Catholics or
authentic Catholics themselves! They deny what Canon Law says about
excommunication. If you can pick and choose what you like out of Catholicism
then why can't you do the same with Islam and claim to be a member of both
religions? Religion would collapse if picking and choosing was right! There
would be no real point in worrying about religious membership at all then!