Our Church’s Positions |
The Catholic Church’s positions can be best obtained from its “official” documents. These include dogmatic proclamations, such as those resulting from Church councils, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, documents approved by organizations such as the United States Council of Catholic Bishops and other similar sources. Opinions outside of these sources, particularly those of individuals and organizations operating outside of approval by the Holy See are not included in these web pages.
Click for a Letter to Diognetus
“A letter to Diognetus” was written in the 2nd century. It is included in a book Why We Belive by Msgr. Cristiani. In it he says “Whoever he may be, the unknown author who wrote these lines deserves our respect and gratitude. That thought alone, ‘what the soul is in the body, that the Christians are in the world’, is one of the most profound and truest that have ever been uttered on the subject of Christianity. Without Christianity the world has no soul! All apologetics is summed up in this”.
Included here are the major documents of Vatican II as direct links to the Vatican web site. It can be very informative to read the actual words of Vatican II rather than rely on a ill-defined slogan such as “in the spirit of Vatican II”. For example find in Gaudium et Spes the words:
Not to be overlooked among the forms of modern atheism is that which anticipates the liberation of man especially through his economic and social emancipation. This form argues that by its nature religion thwarts this liberation by arousing man's hope for a deceptive future life, thereby diverting him from the constructing of the earthly city. Consequently when the proponents of this doctrine gain governmental rower(sic) they vigorously fight against religion, and promote atheism by using, especially in the education of youth, those means of pressure which public power has at its disposal.