Teaching
According to church teaching the Liberal Catholic Church draws the central inspiration of its work from an earnest faith in the living Christ. It holds that the vitality of a church gains in proportion as its members not only revere and worship a Christ who lived two thousand years ago, but also strive to affirm in their lives the eternal Christ of whom St. John (Chapter 8:58) speaks: "Before Abraham was, I am." It is the Christ who ever lives as a mighty spiritual presence in the world, guiding and sustaining his people.
Liberal Catholicism regards these promises as validating all Christian worship of whatever kind as long as it be earnest and true. But it further holds that while the promise of the presence with individual believers is thus effective, Christ also appointed certain rites or sacraments, called 'mysteries' in the Eastern Church, for the greater helping of his people, to be handed down in the church as special channels of power and blessing. Through these 'means of grace' the Liberal Catholic Church believes that Christ is ever present within his church, in fellowship and communion, guiding and protecting them from birth to death. Many in the Liberal Catholic Church believe that there are many churches since there are many ways in which people want to worship God.
Many in the church accept the concept of purgatory and in the Liturgy of the Mass the priest prays for the dead. The church is even open to the concept of reincarnation.
Read more about this topic: Liberal Catholic Church
Famous quotes containing the word teaching:
“I have come to believe ... that the stage may do more than teach, that much of our current moral instruction will not endure the test of being cast into a lifelike mold, and when presented in dramatic form will reveal itself as platitudinous and effete. That which may have sounded like righteous teaching when it was remote and wordy will be challenged afresh when it is obliged to simulate life itself.”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)
“The basis of world peace is the teaching which runs through almost all the great religions of the world. “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Christ, some of the other great Jewish teachers, Buddha, all preached it. Their followers forgot it. What is the trouble between capital and labor, what is the trouble in many of our communities, but rather a universal forgetting that this teaching is one of our first obligations.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“Like a prophet, you are possibly teaching us about the workings of the divine mind, but in the process you are ruining the human mind, dear friend.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)