I posted a month ago on the Act of Faith, that traditional Catholic prayer.
O my God, I firmly believe that You are one God in three divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; I believe that your divine Son became man and died for our sins, and that He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths which the Holy Catholic Church teaches, because You revealed them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived.We use this prayer to remind ourselves that all Church teachings are worthy of belief, and we gain merit through our efforts to conform ourselves to those teachings. Particularly in those teachings pertaining to faith and morals, the Church does not teach error.
However, some Catholics may think this is nothing more than a personal pious reflection, optional at best. They believe they remain in good standing with the Church, all the while dissenting publicly from teachings which the Church has proclaimed must be definitively held.
So, my question is this: Is there a different threshold of belief required for new members of the Church, as opposed to existing members? It would seem reasonable to conclude that the threshold of belief ought to be the same.
I cannot imagine any sensible Catholic taking issue with the propositions in the Creed. Setting aside, for the moment, those radicals who do not believe, for example, in Jesus' bodily resurrection. I think there are deeper problems in those cases, which I do not intend to deal with here. I'm talking about all those Catholics who can comfortably rally around the Creed, and proclaim all it holds to be true.
And this is certainly a reasonable threshold of belief, that we could say is a minimal requirement for membership in the Church. Right? Even in the Rite of Baptism for adults, the catechumens are required to recite the Creed, as evidence of their faith in what the Church believes and teaches. So far, so good.
But what about the Rite of Reception of Baptized Christians into the Full Communion of the Catholic Church? Is there any distinction? Maybe, because these candidates were Baptized in a separated Christian community, there ought to be a further test to ensure that they have genuinely conformed their minds to the teaching of the Catholic Church. And in fact, there is.
In the Reception of Baptized Christians, the candidates do indeed recite the Creed, as do the catechumens, but then, this extra sentence is added, which sounds an awful lot like the Act of Faith shown above.
I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.Of course, God cannot reveal error, so this is a statement of belief that all the Church believes, teaches and proclaims is without error. A pretty high threshold, wouldn't you say? And yet, without it, a Baptized Christian cannot be received into full Catholic communion.
And so, I return to my original question. Is there a different threshold of belief required for new members of the Church, as opposed to existing members? If the answer is no, then how can a person claim to be in good standing with the Church, who cannot make the same profession of belief that is minimally required for reception of candidates into the Church? To me, it would seem an obvious conclusion that dissent from definitive Church teaching is not permissible for a Catholic who wishes to be considered in good standing with the Church.
