What do Catholics believe? on QuizRevolution

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1030: "All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven."

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1127: "elebrated worthily in faith, the sacraments confer the grace that they signify. They are efficacious because in them Christ himself is at work: it is he who baptizes, he who acts in his sacraments in order to communicate the grace that each sacrament signifies."

The Council of Trent decrees, "but we are therefore said to be justified freely, because of the fact that none of those things which precede justification-whether faith or works-merits the grace itself of justification." (Session 6, Chapter 8)

After a person is justified, his good works (done in faith and love) merit an increase of grace and glory (sanctification), as The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains in n. 427: "Moved by the Holy Spirit, we can merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification and for the attainment of eternal life. Even temporal goods, suitable for us, can be merited in accordance with the plan of God. No one, however, can merit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversion and justification."

Paul VI, Credo of the People of God: "Every theological explanation which seeks some understanding of this mystery [of the Eucharist] must, in order to be in accord with Catholic faith, maintain that in the reality itself, independently of our mind, the bread and wine have ceased to exist after the Consecration, so that it is the adorable body and blood of the Lord Jesus that from then on are really before us under the sacramental species of bread and wine, as the Lord willed it, in order to give Himself to us as food and to associate us with the unity of His Mystical Body."

See Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1262 and following.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 464: "The unique and altogether singular event of the Incarnation of the Son of God does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor does it imply that he is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man."

Pius XII explains at length in Divino afflante Spiritu; he also says in Humani generis: "For some go so far as to pervert the sense of the Vatican Council's definition that God is the author of Holy Scripture, and they put forward again the opinion, already often condemned, which asserts that immunity from error extends only to those parts of the Bible that treat of God or of moral and religious matters."

St Pius X condemned this proposition in Lamentabili sane: "Divine inspiration does not extend to all of Sacred Scriptures so that it renders its parts, each and every one, free from every error."

Since he is a divine Person, all attributes and actions of Jesus are attributable to God (this is why Mary is called "Mother of God"). God by definition is incapable of sin. Therefore, Jesus is incapable of sin.

Although Christ has both a divine and a human will, his human will is completely conformed to his divine will by the grace of their union in his one divine Person. His human will is the human will of God the Son. For this reason, Jesus is incapable of being inclined to sin. The temptations he suffered at the hands of the devil are not internal but external assaults to which he was never in danger of succumbing but which did cause him suffering that he had to endure.

This teaching is upheld by several Popes and Ecumenical Councils.

The Third Council of Constantinople said it this way:

"We likewise proclaim in him [Christ], according to the teaching of the holy Fathers, two natural volitions or wills and two natural actions, without division, without change, without separation, without confusion. The two natural wills are not-by no means-opposed to each other as the impious heretics assert; but his human will is compliant, it does not resist or oppose but rather submits to his divine and almighty will. For, as the wise Athanasius says, it was necessary that the will of the flesh move itself, but also that it be submitted to the divine will; because just as his flesh is said to be and is the flesh of God the Word, so too the natural will of his flesh is said to be and is God the Word's very own, as he himself declares: 'I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.' He calls the will of his flesh his own will, because the flesh also has become his own. For just as his most holy and immaculate flesh has not been destroyed by being divinised but remained in its own state and kind, so also his human will has not been destroyed by being divinised. It has rather been preserved, according to the words of Gregory the theologian: 'For his will-referring to that of the Saviour-, being fully divinised, is not opposed to God." (In Denzinger-Schonmetzer, Enchiridion symbolorum, n. 556, translation from Neuner-Dupuis)

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 499: "The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary's real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ's birth 'did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity but sanctified it.' And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the 'Ever-virgin'."

Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1114: "'Adhering to the teaching of the Holy Scriptures, to the apostolic traditions, and to the consensus . . . of the Fathers,' we profess that 'the sacraments of the new law were . . . all instituted by Jesus Christ our Lord.'"