Required beliefs for membership

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Required beliefs for membership

Members of this group are required to believe every definitive teaching of the Roman Catholic Faith, including, but not limited to, those doctrines specified as required beliefs for membership. Catholics still struggling with certain few difficult points of doctrine might still be admitted or retained as members, but those who have decided against Church teaching will not be.

Specified as required beliefs for membership:

ON SOURCES OF TRUTH

1. The teaching of the Catholic Church is everything taught, explicitly or implicitly, by infallible Sacred Tradition, everything taught, explicitly or implicitly, by infallible Sacred Scripture, and the teachings of the Magisterium.

Anyone who believes only what is explicitly taught in documents of the Magisterium, and not also all that is taught by Tradition and Scripture, and all that is necessarily implied as true by Tradition, Scripture, and Magisterium, is a heretic who has gone astray from the true Catholic Faith.

2. Sacred Tradition is not an oral tradition, rather it is "the deeds wrought by God in the history of salvation" (DV, n. 2). Tradition is transmitted partly by word of mouth, but more so by deed and example, and by the spiritual life of the Church.

3. The Bible is entirely inspired and entirely inerrant, on matter of faith and morals and salvation, as well as on every other topic whatsoever about which Sacred Scripture makes an assertion.

4. The Magisterium is an ability and authority, given by God to the Church as a whole, but exercised only by the Pope and the Bishops, to teach the truths of Tradition and Scripture. The Magisterium is the servant of Tradition and Scripture, and can only teach truths found either explicitly or implicitly in Tradition or Scripture.

5. The Magisterium teaches infallibly in any of three ways:

a. Papal infallibility (i.e. solemn definitions of the Pope)
b. solemn definitions of Ecumenical Councils
c. the Universal Magisterium, when the Pope and the Bishops teach, in agreement, one doctrinal position definitively to be held.

All other teachings of the Magisterium are non-infallible and subject to the limited possibility of error.

6. The Church also has a temporal authority, distinct from the teaching authority, which exercises judgments of the prudential order, including rules, norms, decisions on practical matters, and the like. The temporal authority of the Church is fallible.

7. The faithful must adhere to the teachings of Tradition, and of Scripture, and of the Magisterium. Some faithful dissent is possible on fallible temporal decisions and on some points of non-infallible teachings that are neither essential to salvation, nor definitively taught