A question was asked of me about the building blocks of the Catholic faith. Is there such a thing? Do Catholics actually have a structure of belief? Well, yes, there are 4 essential building blocks of our life of faith. These 4 areas are the very same areas by which the Catechism of the Catholic is structured.
The 4 Pillars of the Catholic Faith:
-Creed
-10 Commandments
-7 Sacraments
-The Lord's Prayer (Christian prayer)
Catholics believe in revealed
truth. Spirituality needs to be founded on truth otherwise you have nothing.
Hence creed, code & cult are essential aspects of Catholic Faith.
The study of faith needs two distinctions to understand what's going with the army of words and ideas associated with theological reflection: fides quae and fides
qua.
Fides quae ("faith which") is the faith which is held by
the Church through divine revelation or sacred tradition (it is what is considered to be objective, verifiable faith).
Fides qua
("faith by which") is the faith by which a person is moved to respond
to God. A person's understanding of his or her personal relationship
to God is spoken of here; here we usually filter what hear of divine revelation; in some instances personal
revelation is located in this type of faith, e.g., the teachings of the saints would be a distinction of fides qua (we'll say this is subjective faith, a faith known through concrete experience).
Theologically speaking, a theologian be able to
distinguish between fides quae and fides qua and to always maintain conformity
in study and work with fides quae. Only a few theologian have held a personal
faith that has been enlightened enough to illuminate fides quae. The task of
theology is gain a deeper understanding of faith; it is, as St Anselm said:
faith seeking understanding. Our study of theology is done on our knees; that
is, we study the fact of God and the allied theological sciences from a posture of adoration of
God first, in the sacred Liturgy and second, in personal prayer.
The student of
theology takes his or her first presupposition from the position of "faith." Faith is not a gift of God it is also the manner by which we look at
reality, it's the "starting point for a new way -that is, a true way of
becoming aware of reality itself." Through faith we have access to truth and through we live truth. Without faith in the study of theology
we have mere religious studies.
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