Hopefully, as some have asked for this, I can return to both the discussion on the priesthood from the document quoted below and to the perfection series. But, I want to finish the mini-series on the Body of Christ and the Church. One must look at Christ in relationship to the Church.
Looking at
Dominus Iesus, which is one of the most important Declarations to come out of the CDF in the past fifteen years, one sees a clear teaching on religions. Since the proliferation of New Age religions and the relativism which makes people accept false as true, many people in the Church have been confused. I have the link on the side bar.
The very beginning of this declaration points out that we cannot be relativistic about our Faith. We are commanded, all of us, to evangelize in some way, where we find ourselves daily.
The Lord Jesus, before ascending into heaven, commanded his disciples to proclaim the Gospel to the whole world and to baptize all nations: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; he who does not believe will be condemned” (Mk 16:15-16); “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the world” (Mt28:18-20; cf. Lk 24:46-48; Jn 17:18,20,21; Acts 1:8).
The Church's universal mission is born from the command of Jesus Christ and is fulfilled in the course of the centuries in the proclamation of the mystery of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the mystery of the incarnation of the Son, as saving event for all humanity.
This is a lost teaching, even after Blessed John Paul II's all to the new evangelization. I underline the quotation so as to emphasize the importance of this call for all Catholics. When parents complain to me that the nuns and priests and other laity did not evangelize their children in Catholic schools, I tell them it is their call to do this.
A second common misunderstanding is that Jesus was a victim of His time. The women priests like to say this. No, He was God and this thought is a heresy condemned a long time ago and here in this document. Note:
Therefore, the theory of the limited, incomplete, or imperfect character of the revelation of Jesus Christ, which would be complementary to that found in other religions, is contrary to the Church's faith. Such a position would claim to be based on the notion that the truth about God cannot be grasped and manifested in its globality and completeness by any historical religion, neither by Christianity nor by Jesus Christ.
Such a position is in radical contradiction with the foregoing statements of Catholic faith according to which the full and complete revelation of the salvific mystery of God is given in Jesus Christ. Therefore, the words, deeds, and entire historical event of Jesus, though limited as human realities, have nevertheless the divine Person of the Incarnate Word, “true God and true man”13 as their subject. For this reason, they possess in themselves the definitiveness and completeness of the revelation of God's salvific ways, even if the depth of the divine mystery in itself remains transcendent and inexhaustible. The truth about God is not abolished or reduced because it is spoken in human language; rather, it is unique, full, and complete, because he who speaks and acts is the Incarnate Son of God. Thus, faith requires us to profess that the Word made flesh, in his entire mystery, who moves from incarnation to glorification, is the source, participated but real, as well as the fulfilment of every salvific revelation of God to humanity,14 and that the Holy Spirit, who is Christ's Spirit, will teach this “entire truth” (Jn 16:13) to the Apostles and, through them, to the whole Church.
There is no distinction between the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith. Jesus Christ made no errors because He was a first century Jew. He is Perfect God and Man. He created the culture and the society of the Jewish religion through the Revelation of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Christ is the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Old Testament and His covenant is the New Testament, the New Covenant. Christ did not, for example, get rid of the Ten Commandments.
From the document:
The Church's Magisterium, faithful to divine revelation, reasserts that Jesus Christ is the mediator and the universal redeemer: “The Word of God, through whom all things were made, was made flesh, so that as perfect man he could save all men and sum up all things in himself. The Lord...is he whom the Father raised from the dead, exalted and placed at his right hand, constituting him judge of the living and the dead”.34 This salvific mediation implies also the unicity of the redemptive sacrifice of Christ, eternal high priest (cf. Heb6:20; 9:11; 10:12-14).
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I love this document and will look at it again later. God bless you all.
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