Religious Education 1

INITIUM FIDEI: AN INTRODUCTION TO DOING CATHOLIC THEOLOGY

Notes for MIDTERM

Revelation -- God’s self-communication and his call to a loving relationship with man.

Faith -- Man’s response to this invitation is a response in faith.

Ordinary Sense :

Basically, faith is the acceptance of the word of another, trusting in what the other is saying
because he is convinced that the other is honest and is telling the truth. The basic motive of all
faith is the authority and integrity of someone who is speaking.

Christian Meaning:
For a Christian, faith is NOT simply “believing in God”; it is our personal response as disciples
of Christ.

As a Theological Virtue:
Faith enables a person to believe that what God has revealed is true, not because it can be
understood by reason, but because of the authority of God who can neither deceive.

Faith is a reality touching our whole lives :

our minds

our hands

our hearts

ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS ON FAITH:

A. ASPECTS
B. COMPONENTS
C. PARTS
D. FACETS

The following is a diagram of the Catholic Faith that showcases how the dimensions of faith are
related to one another, and the need for all three dimensions of faith. This diagram is conscious
of the integration of Doctrine (orthodoxy) with both Catholic Morals, involving conduct and
attitudes, as well as with Catholic Worship (orthopraxis), as highlighted in the National
Catechetical Directory for the Philippines:
Essential Dimensions of Faith

BELIEVING - Faith involves our basic convictions as Christians. It is not mere “head
knowledge”. Refer to a cognitive activity, primarily related to the mind, the intellect and reason.

DOING - Christ himself taught: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the
kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Mt 7:21).

Entrusting/Worshipping –
Beyond believing and doing, faith is entrusting oneself into God’s hands.
 It also refers to the:

synthesis of faith
profession of faith,
symbols of faith,
code of beliefs
articles of faith.

Thus, the Creed is the synthesis of the Christian Faith which are grounded on the Sacred
Scriptures.
GRACE

Moralistic - Provision of Moral Framework (Religion)

Therapeutic - Provision of Inward Sense of Fulfillment

Deistic - Basically on God’s Absence (Provider of Moral Guidelines and Emotional Stability)

When faith and love animate behavior,

God is drawn near.
Christ becomes visible,
the grace of God is made available to us.

- St. Augustine of Hippo-

“We must begin firmly rooted in our Catholic faith, and in what makes us truly Catholic. This
begins with a recognition of the presence of God as active in our lives and in our world. It begins
with the experience of grace, and the authentically Catholic principle of sacramentality.”

MORALISTIC THERAPEUTIC DEISM (MTD)

1. A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over
human life on Earth.

2. God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most
world religions.

3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to
resolve a problem.

5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

- By Christian Smith, 1999 –

PRINCIPLE OF SACRAMENTALITY

The sacramental principle means that God is PRESENT to humankind and we respond to God’s
grace through the ordinary and everyday of life in the world. In other words, God’s Spirit and
humankind work together through nature and creation, through culture and society, through our
minds and bodies, hearts and souls, through our labors and efforts, creativity and generativity,
in the depth of our own being and in community with others, through the events and experiences
that come our way, through what we are doing and what is ‘going on’ around us, through
everything and anything of life. Life in the world is sacramental —the medium of God’s
outreach and of human response.

MODEL OF GRACE

“Late have I loved you! Lo, you were within but I outside, seeking for you there. . . . You
called, shouted, broke through my deafness; you flared, blazed, banished my blindness; you
lavished your fragrance.”

For Augustine, GRACE acts. God in love springs into action, creating the world, making a
covenant with Israel that will reach to all the world in Christ. God does not wait in the wings for
an invitation or for a problem to resolve. Instead, God is ever present in the world, seeking
relationship with humanity.

WORD CONTEXT
LITURGY - Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 1071-1075) treat sacred liturgy as source
of life, as well as its relationship with prayer and catechesis. The liturgy is source of life first of
all because it is the “work of Christ” (CCC, 1071). In the second place, because “it is also an
action of his Church”

SACRAMENT - According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "The sacraments are
efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life
is dispensed to us” (#1131).

SACRAMENTAL - “The People of God, the Church, over the centuries has instituted ―
sacramentals (cf. CCC 1667-73). They are objects, actions, practices, places, and the like, that
help us become aware of Christ’s grace-filled presence around us or liberate from the presence of
the Evil One (exorcism).”

The liturgy, the seven sacraments and sacramentals allow us to recognize that God is present to
humankind. It also opens for us the possibility to respond to God’s grace through the ordinary
and everyday realities of our life in this world.

FORMING A SACRAMENTAL AWARENESS AND IMAGINATON

A. RECOGNIZING THE SACRED IN THE ARTS

The first order of business is a reclamation of enchantment with the world, and its ability to
become avenue for grace for all peoples.

B. DAILY MYSTAGOGY

Mystagogy means learning about the mysteries of the faith, pondering such mysteries
such as the liturgy, the sacraments, and most importantly, the mystery of grace.

One of the best ways to practice daily mystagogy is through daily INTERIORITY.

“Do not go outside,” Augustine says, but “return to within yourself; truth dwells in the
inner man; and if you find that your nature is changeable, transcend yourself. But
remember, when you transcend yourself, you are transcending a soul that reasons.
Reach, therefore, to where the light of reason is lit.”

C. EXPERIENCE GOD THRU THE NARRATIVE

“Biblical stories, historical accounts, contemporary examples, and fictional tales can all
form the sacramental awareness.”

Sadly, many people have forgotten a central feature of the faith—the Christian story.

“We move; we cannot but be seeking. But the Real and the Ultimate is coming to us, and
seeking us out—obviously only as we are moving, as we are coming-toward. And when
the times comes that we have found—found because we have been found—we will
discover that our very coming-toward was already being carried (this is what we call
grace) by the power of the movement that is coming upon us, by God’s movement toward
us.” (Karl Rahner)

Types of prayer:

1. BLESSING AND ADORATION

2. PRAYER OF PETITION

The vocabulary of supplication in the New Testament is rich in shades of

meaning: ask, beseech, plead, invoke, entreat, cry out, even "struggle in
prayer”

3. prayer of intercession

Intercession is a prayer of petition which leads us to pray as Jesus did. He is

the one intercessor with the Father on behalf of all men, especially sinners.

4. Prayer of Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving characterizes the prayer of the Church which, in celebrating the
Eucharist, reveals and becomes more fully what she is. Indeed, in the work of
salvation,

5. PRAYER OF PRAISE

Praise is the form of prayer which recognizes most immediately that God is
God. It lauds God for his own sake and gives him glory, quite beyond what he
does, but simply because HE IS.

FORMS:

A - ADORATION
C- CONTRITION
T-THANKSGIVING
S-SUPPLICATION