We know for certain-we have a goal (Heaven), a road map (Scripture and Tradition), examples to follow (the Saints), leadership (the Pope, Bishops, Priests and Deacons), clear teaching authority (the Magisterium of the Church), help along the way (the Sacraments) and we have Divine guidance (the Holy Spirit). It is obvious that we have the tools and resources we need.
Here are eight tips for growing your faith…
Here is a thought provoking quote and prophetic commentary on today’s Christianity…
Cardinal Newman critiqued Luther’s views on faith and assurance when he was still an Anglican:
A system of doctrine has risen up during the last three centuries, in which faith or spiritual-mindedness is contemplated and rested on as the end of religion instead of Christ . . . And in this way religion is made to consist in contemplating ourselves instead of Christ; not simply in looking to Christ, but in ascertaining that we look to Christ, not in His Divinity and Atonement, but in our conversion and our faith in those truths . . . What! is this the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and wherein we stand, the home of our own thoughts, the prison of our own sensations, the province of self? . . . No wonder that where the thought of self obscures the thought of God, prayer and praise languish, and only preaching flourishes . . . To look at Christ is to be justified by faith; to think of being justified by faith is to look from Christ and to fall from grace . . . [Luther] found Christians in bondage to their works and observances; he released them by his doctrine of faith; and he left them in bondage to their feelings . . . Whereas he preached against reliance on self, he introduced it in a more subtle shape; whereas he professed to make the written word all in all, he sacrificed it in its length and breadth to the doctrine which he had wrested from a few texts.
~Newman, John Henry, Lectures on Justification, 1838, (Newman’s Works, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1881), 323-8,330,336-7,339-41.
Catholic Torch 