..or, how it all works together and what to do if you disagree
With this simple sounding, possibly even slightly daunting title, Eleni took us through an evening of discovering how the belief of the Roman Catholic Church has been discerned over the years. Her slides are at the end of this revision note.
The key notes were many - the ones that stood out for me were as follows. Others will have been struck by different things! I think that the most important to remember is that "Life is a journey, not a guided tour". In other words - you need to set out, take one step at a time, and know that you can not explore all of the highways, never mind the byways of truth! God will lead you to what you need to know in any particular time - trust in God!
- teachings build on each other; therefore some are more foundational or more authoritative than others
- there is an 'ecosystem' of theology - everything depends upon everything else!
- this was exemplified by the diagram below:
- “All revealed truths derive from the same divine source and are to be believed with the same faith, yet some of them are more important for giving direct expression to the heart of the Gospel. In this basic core, what shines forth is the beauty of the saving love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ who died and rose from the dead. In this sense, the Second Vatican Council explained, “in Catholic doctrine there exists an order or a ‘hierarchy’ of truths, since they vary in their relation to the foundation of the Christian faith.” This holds true as much for the dogmas of faith as for the whole corpus of the Church’s teaching, including her moral teaching. [Pope Francis: Evangelli Gaudium]