Hi Rico,

It's good to hear from you.

I took a quick review of that site and could not find any page that tells me what this group believes in.

• Can you point me to that page?
  

From my initial analysis, this appears to be a secular or atheist web site that offers a discussion forum where:

• atheists
• agnostics
• secularists, and
• hedonists
  

can rationalize:

• not being religious or
• their behavior.

They have some grave misunderstandings about Catholic Christianity and Biblical Christianity because they don't have the Magisterium of the Church to guide them. The Bible was written by Catholics and their Judeo-Christian ancestors, for Catholics, for use in the Catholic Mass.

Because they don't acknowledge either Oral Tradition or the Catholic Church, they have these secular views that are backed up on their web site by articles from liberal newspapers like:

• the Boston Globe, and
• the New York Times.
  

You can't read the Bible apart from our Mother Church who gave us the Bible, yet this is what they are trying to do.

As our mission states: our purpose at AskACatholic.com is to clarify misperceptions about the Catholic faith and give good reasons to visitors why they should be Catholic. We don't convert people; rather we give them good reasons to be Catholic and let them decide. Muslims believe in forced conversions; we don't. I have a favorites page for this last goal at:

My Favorites

• A Christian by definition believes that Jesus Christ is True God and True Man and is one substance with the Father.
  
• A Christian also believes Jesus came to save all people from their sin through His Passion on the Cross, Death, and Glorious Resurrection from the Death.
  
• A Christian also believes He will come again to judge each of us individually, and as a whole, at the Second Coming.
  
• A Christian also believes that when the Incarnate God, Jesus Christ, says: I will build MY Church on you St. Peter, and your successors. (Matthew 16:13-19) because He is God, He means what he says, because God can neither deceive nor be deceived.
  
• Because a Christian believes in the Words of Christ, what He says about the Church and what authority He gives to the Apostles to protect, safeguard, and preserve His Own Teachings should be followed by all.
  

If you don't believe this, there is no reason why you should be a Catholic Christian.
The Early Church Fathers, the very first Christians, died for the faith I have just articulated.

You can check out my new web site dedicated to the Early Church Fathers at:

• BibleBeltCatholics.com

Again, please send me a hyper link to their statement of belief.

Mike

Hi, Rico! Hi, Mike!

Just a brief note while I'm between classes:

There certainly are admirable things about Buddhism, and the Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft has said that if he didn't have the benefit of the divine revelation that comes through Jesus Christ, he would be a Buddhist. They start with observations about life and suffering and propose a way to approach the problem.

In practice, they have a moral approach that is similar to that of Christianity, and judging by the statements of the Dalai Lama, they even agree with us on many of the hot-button issues that are so disputed in the Western world.

Christianity, like Judaism and Islam, presents a claim that sets it apart from the religions of East and South Asia: a message that there is a God, one God, who has revealed Himself to humanity.

In philosophy, it is said that man seeks the good, the true, and the beautiful. God reveals himself to be the True, the most real, the source of being for all creatures. He is the Good, who reveals to us what is justice and what is right living. He is the Beautiful, who made us for a relationship in which we enjoy his infinite goodness forever.

This Revelation became complete when God became human in Jesus Christ. Jesus is a surprising Revelation of divine love that condescends to bridge the infinite difference between God, the absolute Being, and men, creatures whose being is a gift from Him. Love that even undergoes human death in order to bring God's radical love into the darkest human suffering, and then to overcome it through Jesus' rising from the dead and his glorious return to the Father. By being connected with Jesus, we have a share in these events.

So being a Christian is a matter of accepting this Revelation. For unaided human reason it is impossible, but God gives us the supernatural gift of believing Him. This gift of faith, this virtue, this power to believe, is something you have already received from Him in Baptism.

• Perhaps asking God to help you in exercising this faith will be helpful?

God bless —

— Richard Chonak

Hi, Rico! Hi, Mike!

Now that I'm home, I had a chance to look at the site Rico referenced. It presents over 50 articles about arguments against God.

Of course, it's not practical for our team to try to answer all 50-plus in an e-mail. If Rico is really referring to all these arguments, then he probably should be considering book-length defenses of the Christian faith, such as Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Kreeft and Tacelli. You can get a used copy from Amazon for 1 cent plus shipping.

In general, I think the arguments which non-believing critics present against the Bible are not very substantial, because they tend to look at the Bible in the most unsophisticated way — as if American fundamentalist Protestantism represented the correct way to read Scripture.

That's not how we Catholics read it: fundamentalist literalism pays no attention to history and to the development of revelation over time.

It is typical of such criticisms that they find Old Testament texts which describe obviously immoral actions or extreme punishments for wrongdoing. The Church does not believe or teach that everything described in the Bible was morally right. After all, God revealed Himself to the Jewish people over hundreds of years, slowly changing their religious outlook.

At first their outlook was practically the same as that of neighboring peoples, but they learned that God was not just a power upon whom to call, like the gods of the neighbors; he was the one God. He didn't only want the loyalty of the people which he called; he wanted them to act rightly and treat people justly; and he also cared about the well-being of people outside the people of Israel. These aspects do not appear full-blown at the start of the Old Testament; rather, they appear in phases. So when Old Testament texts present kings and armies wiping out their enemies, or carrying out other shocking actions, this simply reflects where the religious mentality of the Israelites was at the time.

The interpretation of Scripture in the Church is an enormous subject. The inspiration of Scripture means that God is author of its religious message, so we do not claim that God endorsed all the actions that are described in the Bible. Also, we don't claim that God presents Scripture as a work of earth science. Identifying the inspired message in any particular part of Scripture is the work of preachers and teachers, with the Church's teaching authority (the bishops and the Pope), to supervise and to settle disputed questions.

This means that the Bible, by itself, is not our ultimate authority; rather the Bible, interpreted within the community, the Church, with the help of our theological heritage, presents the revealed message of God.

Really, I am encouraged to see how some of the atheists' arguments are so off-base. Rather than rejecting Christianity in those arguments, they are really rejecting a caricature of Christianity, so they may be closer to us than they realize.

To get a more rounded picture of what Christianity is, I recommend going to Catholic sources.
You can view the PBS television series Catholicism by Robert Barron for a historical-cultural view; and you can read the Catechism of the Catholic Church to find more about doctrinal matters.

Above all, the Catholic Church is not afraid of questions. We have a 2000-year heritage of integrating faith and human reason in order to explore the Revelation from God which invites us to live as his friends.

I hope these considerations will be of some use to you!

— Richard