What do we believe about the Catholic Church and salvation?

AFC Team

We firmly believe that Jesus Christ made His Catholic Church the ordinary means of Salvation. We should desire to share the Church’s fullness with all mankind.

Catholics believe that Jesus Christ placed the work of Salvation in the care of His Church. Speaking to His disciples, Jesus said, “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Luke 10:16). Not to the individual, but to the Church, was the promise made by Christ: “And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever” (John 14:16).

On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles in tongues of fire and transformed those men into the strong foundation upon which Christ’s Church was to be built. The once ignorant, weak, and timid Apostles now went bravely forward to confront the world and to save it for their Master.

Catholics believe that only through the Church can we find full security and certainty about the meaning and destiny of human life, and know fully what God wills us to believe and do, thus attaining Salvation. Without the Church, religion becomes merely a matter of opinion and conjecture, and we have no assurance as to what is true or false.

Our lives as Catholic Christians are not meaningless. We are not at the mercy of a blind, unreasonable fate. We know that we are walking in the sunlight of truth, under the loving care of our heavenly Father and with the guidance of the Church, our spiritual mother upon earth. As we recognize the unique fullness of the Catholic Church, we should thank our Lord for this great gift, “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).