I am a Catholic and I believe in God but I do not think I believe in Jesus. Does this matter?
Thank you for your question - but I am confused by it. We believe that God is Father, Son (Jesus) and Holy Spirit. To believe in God, then, means believing in Jesus. I think I can answer you best by giving a quick summary of the main things that Catholics do believe in. I hope this helps.
What do Catholics believe?
To find out more about anything said below, please go to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can search the text for key words, and you will get the official teaching in each area. The answer I am giving here naturally cannot hope to include everything that Catholics believe: I have just given the most important things.
Above all, we believe in Jesus Christ: that Jesus is the Son of God, that he was born in the flesh, to Mary, and so was both fully human and fully divine. We believe Jesus lived on earth, and that he died and rose from the dead. We believe that Jesus gave us a perfect example, and a perfect set of teachings to live by, which can be summed up as a rule of love. True love, when you do things because you have the happiness of the person you love as your own greatest motivation. It is a love which starts from loving God, and flows into loving ourselves, and loving those around as. Jesus said, "Love one another as I have loved you." As I have loved you. Jesus' example is the one we should follow, always.
We believe in the Holy Trinity - God as Father, all present, creator and sustainer of the world; God as Son, Jesus Christ, and God as Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was promised by Jesus and is sometimes describes as the personification of love: the love shared by the Father and Son is expressed as the Holy Spirit, who is then alive and active in our lives. The Holy Spirit was made present to the disciples at Pentecost, when the Spirit appeared as a wind and tongues of fire, giving the disciples the courage to go and tell the world about Jesus, and the power to be understood in many different languages.
We believe in the Eucharist. At the Last Supper, Jesus broke bread and said to his friends, "This is my body." He held up the cup filled with wine, and said, "This is my blood." Then he said, "Do this in memory of me." We believe that at each Mass, when the bread and wine are offered and consecrated by the Priest, that this is a making present once again of Jesus. This is expressed as transubstantiation, which means that although it still looks, feels and tastes like bread and wine, what it actually is, its true substance, has changed, so that it really is Jesus Christ.
We believe in the Scriptures - Old and New Testament. The Old Testament tells us of God's relationship with the Jewish people; the New Testament is the life of Jesus Christ and the early church. We believe that the Old and New Testaments were inspired by God, but not literally dictated, word for word. This means we do not take everything in the Bible literally - we allow for times when the writers used metaphors, and for images that were particular to their cultures. However, we do believe that everything God wanted to say to us is contained in the Bible, and so reading the Bible, praying with it, and learning more and more about it is an essential part of what it is to be a Catholic. Linked to this is our Tradition as a Church: those things that we "hand on" from one generation to the next, as the fullness of our faith. These include Scripture itself, and the essential teachings such as what we believe about the Eucharist: key beliefs that are rooted in Scripture but concern specific details that are not always completely explicit in the Bible but were usually discussed and decided upon within the very early church, soon after Christ's death. Finally, there is also teaching from the Magisterium - the Pope (as the successor to St Peter) and the Bishops facing questions that were not there in the time of Jesus (human cloning, for instance) and offering guidance and specific teaching to Catholics.
We believe in the Sacraments, as particular moments of God's grace in our lives. The sacraments are Baptism, Reconciliation, Holy Communion, Confirmation, Marriage, Holy Orders, Anointing of the Sick.
We believe that every person is created in the image and likeness of God, and so every person has the right to a dignified life, from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death. This means that Catholics work hard to help those who are poor in the world, and those who suffer, so that they can find hope in their lives. We do this with charities like CAFOD.
We believe in the power of prayer. Prayer means giving time to talk to God, and to listen to him. Just as with a friend, or with anyone in our lives with whom we want to build a relationship, we need to make dedicated time to pray. Prayer can be defined as "lifting the mind and heart to God": because we believe that God loves us, we believe that he wants to be in a relationship of love with us. That relationship is developed by us when we give time to prayer.
We believe that the Pope is the successor of St Peter, to whom Jesus gave the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
We believe that we have been given free will by God. This means we have complete freedom in our actions, and we can choose whether to act well or badly, and indeed whether to believe in God or not. Without free will, there would be no faith: our belief would be forced, not free.
We believe that when we die life is changed, not ended. When Jesus rose from the dead he showed us that the permanence of death was at an end - that we too, after our natural death on earth, will live on and will meet Jesus face to face. He will meet us with compassion and love, and we will have the Holy Spirit to be our advocate - a defender and strength - but we will be asked about what we have done while on earth, and whether we have been true to Christ's command to love other people, including our enemies, and those who we may not know personally, but who we know need our help, particularly the poor and suffering in our world.
As I say, this is not intended to try to be a complete list of Catholic beliefs, but I think it includes all the key parts of our faith. There would be much more to say about each one - please do look at the Catechism for more information. In the Catechism you can also search for the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed (which is the one we say at Mass) and these also spell out our key beliefs.
Article Written: 22nd May 2005
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