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:
“The discipline of the Old Testament may be summed up as a discipline teaching us to abhor and flee from sin; the discipline of the New Testament, as a discipline teaching us to die to it.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you, and you are he; then is a teaching; and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever lose the benefit.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Mrs. Zajac knows you didn’t try. You don’t just hand in junk to Mrs. Zajac. She’s been teaching an awful lot of years. She didn’t fall off the turnip cart yesterday. She told you she was an old-lady teacher.”
—Christine Zajac, U.S. fifth-grade teacher. As quoted in Among Schoolchildren, “September” section, part 1, by Tracy Kidder (1989)