Free Republic

Fundamentals of Catholicism by Father Robert Altier Lesson 16: Baptism, Confirmation, and Anointing of the Sick The first sacrament we will consider is baptism because it is by baptism that a person becomes a member of the Church and participates in the divine life of Jesus Christ. Baptism is the sacrament of spiritual regeneration conferred by the application of water while consecrating the person to the Holy Trinity. Baptism, then, confers with it a spiritual regeneration, divine adoption, the beginning of eternal life, and conformity to Jesus Christ in His death and resurrection. By baptism we become children of God...

Fundamentals of Catholicism by Father Robert Altier Lesson 15: An Introduction to the Sacraments [Class begins with a greeting by Father and the recitation of the Hail Mary.] We are going to begin our coverage of the sacraments, which will take us through the next several lessons. This is critically important because the whole life of the Church takes place in and through the sacraments. So we have to ask, first of all, what is a sacrament? Anyone raised Catholic will remember that a sacrament is an outward sign of an interior reality instituted by Christ in order to give...

Fundamentals of Catholicism by Father Robert Altier Lesson 14: Grace and the Divine Life (Part 2) We will just pick up where we left off, and that is to talk about predestination. We have to ask the question: What is predestination? Predestination means the ordination of God by which certain people are led efficaciously to the attainment of eternal, supernatural salvation. This includes two acts on the part of God: first, the act of the intellect by which God knows who will be saved and the precise means by which they will be saved; and second, the act of the...

Fundamentals of Catholicism by Father Robert Altier Lesson 13: Grace and the Divine Life (Part 1) [Class begins with a greeting by Father and the recitation of the Hail Mary.] In this lesson, we have a lot to cover. We are going to talk about grace, which is one of those absolute mysteries, but grace is also one of those things where there has been a lot of study. There are over a hundred different distinctions with regard to grace. We are not going to make all of the distinctions, but grace is one of the areas that the Church...

Fundamentals of Catholicism by Father Robert Altier Lesson 12: Divine Revelation (Part 2) Picking up where we left off, one of the difficulties in translating Scripture is that the oldest-surviving complete Hebrew manuscript of the Old Testament is from the 10th century AD. Those are known as the Masoretic manuscripts. Remember that some of the Old Testament works were first written in the 10th century BC, so we are talking about 20 centuries in between. That is a long time and a lot of copies, obviously. When we are talking about the Old Testament, at least the Pentateuch, which is...

Fundamentals of Catholicism by Father Robert Altier Lesson 11: Divine Revelation (Part 1) [The class begins with a greeting by Father and the recitation of the Our Father.] In this lesson, we are going to cover the topic of divine revelation, which is critically important. Naturally, when we think of divine revelation, we think of Sacred Scripture. So the first question we ask is: Who do the Scriptures reveal? If we are talking about revelation, the question is: Who or what is being revealed by this revelation? Of course, what we have in Sacred Scripture is the revelation of God...

Fundamentals of Catholicism by Father Robert Altier Lesson 10: The Church (Part 2) In the previous lesson, we were talking about Peter, and now we want to move into his successors and look at the primacy of the Pope. The purpose of the papacy is to preserve the unity and the solidarity of the Church for all time. You have to have a head; there has to be a point of unity, otherwise we split up. All you have to do is look at any of the groups that have broken from the Church. Immediately, they start splintering into all...

Fundamentals of Catholicism by Father Robert Altier Lesson 9: The Church (Part 1) [Class begins with the recitation of the Our Father] We are going to cover one of the most important topics, especially of our day, and that is the topic of ecclesiology. The word ecclesiology means “the study of the Church.” That comes from the Greek word ekklesia. Ekklesia means “an assembly, a gathering, a community” – or the Church. It means a convocation or a meeting of people. When we talk about the Catholic Church, the word Catholic means “universal, complete, whole, total,” or something along those...

Fundamentals of Catholicism by Father Robert Altier Lesson 8: Mary (Part 2) At the end of the previous lesson, we were asking the questions about the brothers and sisters of Jesus, Jesus being Our Lady’s firstborn son, and Joseph not having any relations with Our Lady until she had borne a son, and so on. There are a couple of things to understand here. First of all, in Aramaic, which is the spoken form of Hebrew, there are no words for “cousin.” Even today in the Middle East, brothers and sisters are anyone who is a close family relation. You...

Fundamentals of Catholicism by Father Robert Altier Lesson 7: Mary (Part 1) [Class begins with a greeting by Father and the recitation of the Hail Mary.] Now we get to talk about one of my favorite of all topics, and that is the Blessed Virgin Mary, the most wonderful lady to ever have lived. It is certainly well known to most people that Catholics foster a deep devotion to our Blessed Lady, but most people do not really understand that devotion very well. To have at least some Marian devotion is part and parcel of every single Catholic. In the...

Fundamentals of Catholicism by Father Robert Altier Lesson 6: Jesus Christ – God and Man (Part 2) We were talking about the knowledge of Jesus, or the way that His human mind works, and we said that there was no error or ignorance in Jesus’ human soul due to the hypostatic union. From this, we can see that the knowledge gained from the Beatific Vision is what is called “infused” knowledge. That is, God simply puts the knowledge in our minds without having sense experience to go with it. The spiritual concepts are communicated immediately to the mind by God....

Fundamentals of Catholicism by Father Robert Altier Lesson 5: Jesus Christ – God and Man (Part 1) [The class begins with a greeting by Father and the recitation of the Our Father.] Tonight we are going to spend our entire time talking about our Blessed Lord: Who is He, what was His mission, what did He do for us and how. To put it into context, we go back a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about original sin, and we remember that after original sin we no longer know how to act the way we were created...

Fundamentals of Catholicism by Father Robert Altier Lesson 4: Creation of the Human Person and Original Sin Let us talk about the soul. The soul is defined as the principle of life in a living being. Are there any other beings with souls? The answer is “yes.” Anything that is alive has a soul. There are three different kinds of souls. There are vegetative souls – that is what a plant has; a plant is alive. There are sensitive souls – that is what animals have. Then there are rational souls – that is what human beings have. You could...

Fundamentals of Catholicism by Father Robert Altier Lesson 3: God’s Creation of the World [Class begins with a greeting by Father and the recitation of the Hail Mary.] Tonight we are going to talk about creation and original sin. Last week when we were talking about God, we said everything that is not God is outside of Him (not outside of Him in the sense that it would be beyond Him, but outside of Him in the sense that it is not God) and anything outside of God was created by God. Creation means “the production of something out of...

Fundamentals of Catholicism by Father Robert Altier Lesson 2: The Most Holy Trinity If I do not have you confused enough and wanting to leave, now we are going to get into the really hard stuff. Before we even begin, just a warning that this is the most difficult stuff in theology. We are going to talk now about the Trinity. Again, we begin with ourselves, and we recognize that we have consciousness as human persons. That consciousness gives us awareness of ourselves doing things. We know ourselves, then, as doers of certain actions or certain things. Consciousness also allows...

Fundamentals of Catholicism by Father Robert Altier Lesson 1: The Unity of God [The class begins with a welcome by Father Altier and the recitation of the Our Father. Following this, the course syllabus is distributed to all students}. If you have the syllabus now, you will see basically what we will be doing. In the middle are the references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church that will correspond to what we are doing. What we will be doing is not taken directly out of the Catechism, so it is looking at things from a little different perspective. It...

WASHINGTON, April 14, 2006 – It took a personal connection to devote Bob Calvert to supporting America's troops, and now he says there's no turning back. Calvert hosts a weekly radio talk show on Sunday evenings, broadcast mainly by Internet-based Stardust Radio. He said he has completed 20 interviews so far, averaging three or four guests per show. The first show aired Dec. 11, 2005. "No question about it, my daughter enlisting in the Army was the spark for me," said Calvert in a telephone interview near Fort Carson, Colo. "Once I realized she was serious ... and she was...

Iran's secret talks with Iraqi militants spark fears of proxy war Harry de Quetteville (Filed: 19/03/2006) Iran held secret talks with Shia militant leaders from Iraq and Lebanon only days before the country's nuclear negotiators threatened America with "harm and pain", independent sources in Teheran have revealed. The Iraqi firebrand cleric, Moqtadr al-Sadr and the chief of the armed Shia group Hizbollah in Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah, held separate consultations with leading officials in Teheran. Al-Sadr commands thousands of fighters in Iraq, with the power to destabilise further the country and target British and American troops, while Hizbollah's missile-wielding fighters are...

US warns over Iran talks tactic President Ahmadinejad had rejected previous US requests for talks The White House has expressed scepticism over an offer by Iran to hold talks with the US on Iraq. US National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said he was concerned it could be simply "a device" to divert pressure from Tehran's nuclear ambitions. He said the US had suggested a dialogue last year but had received no response. Iran's apparent enthusiasm now - days before the UN Security Council meets to discuss its nuclear programme - has raised suspicions, correspondents say. The US ambassador to Iraq,...

SACRAMENTO — A frenetic last-minute attempt to place a massive public works bond on the June ballot failed late Wednesday, handing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a key legislative defeat in his bid for re-election. The collapse of negotiations over the bond measure came just hours before an administrative deadline to place measures on the primary election ballot. "We ran out of time," Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata said, after the Senate passed an urgency bill appropriating $1 billion for levee repairs from the state's reserve fund. A partial deal had appeared possible just hours earlier after legislative leaders from both...