Backgroud To Understanding The Catholic Faith

   It is necessary for one with interest in the catholic faith to first understand the following:
a)   The church is not invented but was received   from Jesus Christ's by the apostles and handed on from generation to generation until our own time. The church dates back to the time of our Lord Jesus and his apostles in Jerusalem around the year 33 AD i.e the church of Jesus Christ was to start in Jerusalem (nowhere else) from where it would spread and cover the entire world (Lk.24:47) the church will continue until Christ returns.
b)   The church is our mother. As a good mother, she teaches us (for no one teaches himself), she gives us the new birth by washing us in the waters of baptism (for no one baptizes himself) she feeds us with the bread from heaven (for no one can feed himself) and she presents us to Jesus when this life is over (for no one presents himself).
c)   Christianity, the deposit of faith is preserved and transmitted by the church not by individuals.
d)   Jesus commissioned the church to go out and teach the whole world without giving any book. instead, Jesus promised and later sent the Holy spirit as a protective seal, to dwell forever in his church to teach and to remain his church of all that he taught. Most importantly, this holy spirit was/is to reveal to the church the things that were/are yet to come (Jn.16:12).
e)   Jesus assured the church that he will never depart from the church but that he will be with the church till the end of time (Matt.28:19-20).
f)   Later the church compiled the life of Jesus in what came to be known as the Bible. This Bible tells us that if all that Jesus did were to be recorded that no book not even the whole world will have room for it (Jn 21:25).
g)   For this reason, the church teaches from two important sources from the Bible-the written form as well as from tradition-the unwritten form transmitted by the word of mouth.(II Thess 2: 15).
h)   The church is more human and and divine. The human component of the church may sometimes prove inadequate and disappointing yet it is not for us to try to separate the good from the bad. We should be guided by the words of the master who taught us in Matt (13:24-30) saying,"the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men were sleeping his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away so when the plants came up and bore grain then the weeds appeared also.....The servant said to him,'Then do you want us to go and gather them? But he said, 'No least in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat among them. Let them grow together until the harvest; and at the harvest time I will tell the reaper, gather the weeds first bring them in bundles to be burned, but gather the weeds into my barn.
i)The original apostles of Jesus appointed bishops as their successors. these early bishops are known as the Apostolic Fathers. The writing of the apostolic Fathers are preserved to this day in the church and they help us to confirm the teaching which the church received from the apostle.
j)  The teachings of the church are passed on from one generation of bishops to another and have come down even to us through the successions of these bishops who are of the line of the apostles.
                Salvation comes  from God alone; but because we receive the life of  faith through the church, she is our mother. "we believe the church as the mother of our new birth,  not in the church as if she were the author of our salvation." Because she is our mother, she is also our teacher in the faith-The catechism of the Catholic Church.