Thursday, June 25, 2009

God the Father, original sin and Baptism

God, in the teaching of the Nicene Creed, is the source and creator of nature and all that exists. The Church teaches that God is a loving and caring entity who is directly involved in the world and in people's lives desiring his creatures to love him and to love each other.Catholicism teaches that while human beings live bodily in a visible, material world, their souls simultaneously occupy an invisible, spiritual world, in which spiritual beings called angels exist to "worship and serve God".Some angels, however, chose to rebel against God, becoming demons who now seek to harm mankind.Among other names, the leader of this rebellion has been called "Lucifer", "Satan" and the devil.Satan is believed to have tempted the first humans, whose subsequent act of original sin brought suffering and death into the world.

This event, known in Catholic belief as the Fall of Man, separated humanity from its original intimacy with God. The Catechism states that the description of the fall, in Genesis 3, uses figurative language, but affirms "... a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man" and resulted in "a deprivation of original holiness and justice" that makes each person "subject to ignorance, suffering, and the dominion of death: and inclined to sin". Catholic doctrine accepts the possibility that God's creation occurred in a way consistent with evolution but rejects as outside the scope of science any efforts to use of the theory to deny supernatural divine creation.The soul did not evolve, according to Catholic doctrine, but was infused into man and woman directly by God.The Church believes that people can be cleansed of original sin and all personal sins through Baptism.This sacramental act of cleansing admits a person as a full member of the natural and supernatural Church and can only be conferred on a person once.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

No comments: