Chapter 1
Spiritual creatures, created by God with intelligence and will, who surpass humans in perfection. They are personal and immortal creatures.
Angels
The deliberate killing of unborn human life by means of medical or surgical procedures. Direct abortion is gravely wrong because it is an unjustified attack on human life.
Abortion
The official body of rules (canons) that provides for good order in the Catholic Church.
Canon Law
Obstinate denial or doubt by a baptized person of some truth about God and faith that must be believed.
Heresy
The “sum total of social conditions that allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily”
Common Good
“The power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility”
Free Will
A gift of the Holy Spirit whereby “the pope and bishops in union with him can definitively proclaim a doctrine of faith or morals for the belief of the faithful”
Infallibility
The five positive laws that bind Catholics to the Church and help them to grow in holiness and charity
Precepts of the Church
A mental disposition that either neglects revealed truth or willfully refuses to accept it.
Incredulity
The total rejection of Jesus Christ (and the Christian faith) by a baptized Catholic.
Apostasy
The name for the innermost spiritual principle of human beings. The soul and body together form one unique human nature. The soul is created immediately by God. It is immortal.
Soul
The bishops, in union with the pope, the successor of St. Peter, who are the living and teaching office of the Church. The Magisterium is entrusted with guarding and handing on the Deposit of Faith and with authentically interpreting God’s Revelation, in the forms of both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.
Magisterium
Any doctrine or belief that denies the existence of absolute, universal moral truths.
Moral Relativism
Refusal to submit to the pope’s authority or to remain in union with members of the Catholic Church
Schism
The free and undeserved help that God gives you to respond to his supernatural call to become his adoptive sons and daughters, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life. Grace is a participation in the intimacy of God’s own Trinitarian life, offered from the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit.
Grace
A philosophy that denies there is any meaning in existence or religious beliefs. A nihilist maintains that the only thing that comes after life is nothingness, annihilation.
Nihilism
The moral virtue that inclines you to discern a good, ethical, and moral life and to choose the means to accomplish it
Prudence
A guideline or law that can help regulate human freedom toward what is true and good and, therefore, toward God.
Norm
The theological virtue by which you entrust your entire self to God, acknowledging and believing in him and all that he has said and revealed, as well as all that the Church proposes for your belief.
Faith
The four pivotal virtues that support moral living: prudence (“right reason in action”), justice (giving God and each person his or her due by right), fortitude (courage to persist in living a Christian life), and temperance (moderation in controlling desires for physical pleasures).
Cardinal Virtues
Disordered human desires resulting from Original Sin that produce an inclination to sin, also expressed as “the rebellion of the ‘flesh’ against the ‘spirit’
Concupiscence
A decision-making process that attends to the implications and consequences of an action or choice. The Holy Spirit aids you in distinguishing between trials (which are necessary for your inner growth in virtue) and temptations (which lead to sin and death).
Discernment
The grace of the Holy Spirit to justify you—that is, to cleanse you from your sins and to communicate to you the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ and through Baptism.
Justification
The mandate of all baptized Christians to follow Jesus and participate in his role as priest, prophet, and king.
Discipleship
The personal sin of Adam and Eve, the first human beings, by which they disobeyed God’s commandment and chose their own will over God’s will. As a result, they lost the grace of original holiness and original justice, they became subject to death, and sin entered the world. Original Sin also describes the fallen state of human nature, which affects every person and from which Christ came to redeem the world
Original Sin