Essential Features of the Catholic Church

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Four characteristics of the Church, named in the Nicene Creed, which indicate the essential features of then Church, are: a. One b. Holy c. Catholic d. Apostolic 2.1 Using your notes and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, EXPLAIN your understanding of each of these terms. 2.2 EXPLAIN how we can live out these characteristics in today’s world. The Nicene Creed is the personal statement of faith in the Christian Church – the community of believers who have ‘faith that the Spirit is at the heart of the Church’ (Lennan, 2001, p.13), who share this commitment and practice it in their everyday lives. As a member of the Church, believers affirm their faith by the stating the belief in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. These four essential features of the Church, expressed within the Creed, provide the believer with a path to actively experience “life to the full” (Kelly, 1996, p.18) and to actively participate in an everyday life that commits itself to living out these essential features – to live the gift of divine revelation and the mission it entails. The first characteristic, ‘One’, can be interpreted as the One God (as the Trinity made one by the love that is the Holy Spirit) uniting all people, in all cultures throughout time with a common faith, mission and charity. It is a shared belief in God and in the set of values derived from the teachings of Jesus and continued through the work of the Apostles that unites all believers in communion with Christ and in one faith. At the time of Pentecost, ‘the Holy Spirit descended upon people of different languages and cultures. This means that from the very first the Church has embraced people of different backgrounds and yet, it is that the Spirit creates one body precisely from these differences.’ (Benedict XVI, 2011, p.1). Kloppenburg (1974) suggested that the church is ‘made
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