You said:
First of all, over the last few weeks, I am very grateful for what the web site AskACatholic has provided for me.

At first, when I heard about the web site, my immediate thought was that it was going to be a hoax, but as I looked through the responses, I realized I was wrong in my thinking because of how educated the answers were. I am really grateful for the service you offer. I thank you so much.

You are welcome!

You said:
I spent the whole class time (our teacher was out) talking with a really good friend of mine who is very knowledgeable in theology. She is a Christian, though not a Catholic, and she is a great person to talk to about theology and philosophy. Today, we spoke for a good hour about the flaws in Christianity (not so surprisingly, we found none). My questions are:

1. Are there any doctrinal flaws in Christianity?

I suppose if we believed there were, we wouldn't truly believe in Christianity.  Certainly people will believe that there are and certainly there are:

• mysteries
• tensions, and
• difficulties.  (For example, Why does God allow evil?)

But do these constitute flaws?

Our opponents will argue that they do, and maybe furthermore that this is proof that Christianity is not true.  We will argue, using various arguments, that they are not.  In a sense, if someone wants to find a flaw, there is enough there to seize upon and justify to oneself that one has found a flaw.  In other words, people will believe what they want to believe, therefore it may not be possible to rationally convince someone that Christian doctrine is flawless.

You said:

2. As Catholics, are we saved:
   • by being baptized and doing good works to show that we have been saved by God?,
     
     or is it the other way around:
     
     
   • Do we do good works in order to be saved?

The first one seems correct to me.

• If we believe that the second one is correct, would you please provide an explanation?

You are correct. 

"It is by grace you have been saved, not of works, so that no one may boast."

(St. Paul) 

This is illustrated by the fact that we believe that baptized babies that die go straight to Heaven. 

Hope this helps,

Eric

Phillip,

Catholic doctrines are free from error. The doctrines of other Christian communities are innately flawed because they don't recognize the authority of the one Church Christ founded up Peter. Depending on the doctrine and particular sect, doctrines will contain a combination of truth and error.

With respect to salvation, we are saved by grace through both faith and good works. Salvation is a complete action of Christ from beginning to end which requires our ongoing free will response to grace.

That's the short answer but here are a few more doctrinal details from a Catholic perspective.

When we are baptized we are born again and objectively saved and justified. Normally, we are baptized as infants, however, in the case of a adult, when one professes faith in Christ but does not know of the need for Baptism, they too are objectively saved and justified by what we call a Baptism of desire.

Our good works are a manifestation of grace working our lives and our justification increases in terms of quality.

Think of it this way, when we are born we receive all the muscles and body parts we need for a normal life. However if we don't take care of our body we will grow sick and even die.

When we are born again in Baptism, we are given all that we need for our eternal life, however if we don't exercise our faith, it grows weak and we could fall away from our faith. We exercise our faith by good works done in response to grace.

Additionally, it is possible to die spiritually by committing a mortal sin. For a sin to be mortal it must include all three conditions:

1. It must be a grave matter.
2. We need sufficient time to reflect upon the sin we are about to commit and then must make the decision to sin anyway.
3. We must give full consent of the will to commit the sin.

That said, there are mitigating circumstances. Nevertheless, when we sin, Jesus is faithful and will forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness so long as we repent. As Catholics, we believe the normative way to obtain forgiveness for a mortal sin is through the sacrament of Confession, however, again that is the normative way. If a person has every intention of going to Confession but dies before he or she is able, it is presumed that the desire to receive absolution is sufficient.

In essence, the sacrament of Confession makes up what is lacking in our contrition through the faith of the Church. If we have perfect contrition for a sin, Confession is still needed as soon as possible, but we stand nevertheless forgiven upon our repentance.

Most of the time, we are not perfectly contrite. We know we have done wrong and our repentance is based on the consequence we face, not the fact we have offended God and done an objective evil act. That's part of our fallen condition. We are all somewhat selfish.

Nevertheless God, in His Mercy, gave us the Sacrament of Confession, so that by the ministry of the ordained priesthood, we can receive complete forgiveness despite our imperfect motives for repenting.

Hope this helps.

Please feel free to ask for further clarification.

Under His Mercy

John

Hi Phillip,

Sorry, I should have been more explicit.

We are saved by Baptism, or rather through Baptism (and faith) by grace, not by works (unless you count avoiding sin to avoid damnation as a work earning salvation), and we do good deeds to show we have been saved.

Eric