Topic 34: Fifth Commandment
A revised version of this doctrinal outline, incorporating recent clarifications by Pope Francis regarding the Church's teaching on capital...
Topic 2: Revelation
God wished to manifest himself as a personal Being through the history of salvation. He raised up and guided a people to be the custodian of his...
Topic 5: The Most Holy Trinity
Christians are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. This is the central mystery of our faith and of Christian...
Topic 8: Jesus Christ, True God and True Man
Jesus Christ took on human nature without ceasing to be God. He is true God and true Man.
Topic 11: Resurrection, Ascension and Second Coming
Christ’s Resurrection is a fundamental truth of our faith, as St Paul tells us (cf. 1 Cor 15:13-14). Thereby God inaugurated the life of the future...
Topic 14: History of the Church
The Church continues to make Christ present in human history. In the history of the Church, we find the divine and the human closely intertwined.
Topic 17: Introduction to the Liturgy and the Sacraments
The liturgy is an “action of God” that unites us to Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit (cf. "Sacramentum Caritatis," no. 37).
Topic 20: The Eucharist (II)
The Holy Mass is a true sacrifice because it makes present, in the “today” of the Church’s liturgical celebration, the unique sacrifice of our...
Topic 23: Penance (II)
Priests receive from God the power to forgive sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Topic 25: Marriage
“God himself is the author of marriage.” The intimate conjugal union between a man and a woman is sacred, and is structured according to laws...
Topic 28: Grace and the Virtues
Grace “is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it”...
Topic 31: The First Commandment
Christ taught that to be saved we must carry out the commandments, which express the core of the natural moral law. The first commandment is twofold:...
Topic 35: Sixth Commandment
"God is love" (1 Jn 4:8), and his love is fruitful. He wants human beings to share in this fecundity, by linking the procreation of each new person...
Topic 38: Ninth and Tenth Commandments
These two commandments help us to live holy purity (the ninth) and detachment from material goods (the tenth) in our thoughts and desires.
eBook: “Summaries of Catholic Teaching”
This free eBook offers in several formats brief summaries of the teaching of the Catholic Church on key points of faith and morals, prepared by...
Topic 3: Supernatural Faith
The virtue of faith is a supernatural virtue that enables us to assent firmly to all that God has revealed.
Topic 6: Creation
The importance of the truth about creation comes from its being the foundation of God’s saving plans culminating in Christ. Both the Bible and the...
Topic 9: The Incarnation
The Incarnation is the supreme demonstration of God’s love for mankind, when the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity took on our human nature while...
Topic 12: I Believe in the Holy Spirit. I Believe in the Holy Catholic Church.
The Holy Spirit intimately unites the faithful to Christ so that they form a single body, the Church, with a diversity of members and functions.
Topic 15: The Church and the State
The salvation achieved by Christ, and hence the mission of the Church, is directed to the human person in his or her integral being.
Topic 18: Baptism and Confirmation
Baptism “justifies” us in God’s sight, while Confirmation brings us the supernatural gifts of Christian maturity.
Topic 21: The Eucharist (III)
Faith in Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist has led the Church to offer adoration to the Blessed Sacrament, both during and outside the liturgy...
Topic 24: Anointing of the Sick
For a Christian sickness and death can and should be a means to seek holiness and to redeem with Christ. This is the purpose of the sacrament of the...
Topic 26: Freedom, Law and Conscience
God created us with the great gift of freedom. The natural law has the force of law as the voice and interpreter of the 'higher reason' of the divine...
Topic 29: The Person and Society
A new doctrinal outline in the "Summaries of Catholic Teaching" series. Many people have found these helpful for getting to know the Catholic faith...
Topic 32: Second and Third Commandments
The second commandment prescribes honoring God's name, while the third requires keeping feast days holy.
Topic 36: Seventh Commandment
The seventh commandment forbids unjustly taking or keeping the goods of one’s neighbor and wronging him in any way with respect to his goods.
Topic 39: Prayer
Prayer is absolutely necessary for our spiritual life. It is, as it were, the “breathing” that permits the life of the spirit to develop.
Topic 1: The Existence of God
Can we know that God exists by reason alone? What are some of the main pathways for reaching God's existence. Can conscience and human freedom be...
Topic 4: God's Nature and Action
The God we come to know through faith and reason is "spiritual, transcendent, omnipotent, eternal, personal, and perfect. He is truth and love."
Topic 7: Elevation to the Supernatural Order and Original Sin
In creating the first man and woman, God constituted them in a state of holiness and justice. He also granted them the possibility of sharing in his...
Topic 10: Passion and Death on the Cross
Christ died for our sins, to free us from them and redeem us from the slavery that sin introduced into mankind’s life.
Topic 13: I Believe in the Communion of Saints and the Forgiveness of Sins
The Church is a communion of saints—the community of all men and women who have received the grace of regeneration from the Spirit, making them...
Topic 16: I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and Life Everlasting
By this truth we affirm the immortality to which mankind is destined; it is thus a reminder of the dignity of the human person, and in particular of...
Topic 19: The Eucharist (I)
The Eucharist is the memorial of Christ’s Paschal mystery, making present his unique sacrifice in the liturgy of the Church.
Topic 22: Penance (I)
Christ instituted the sacrament of Penance to offer us a new possibility of converting and recovering, after Baptism, the grace of justification
Topic 24 (2): Holy Orders
The sacrament of Holy Orders confers a participation in Christ’s priesthood. The ministerial priesthood is essentially distinct from the common...
Topic 27: Morality of Human Acts
“Acting is morally good when the choices of freedom are in conformity with man’s true good and thus express the voluntary ordering of the person...
Topic 30: Personal Sin
Personal sin is an “action, word or desire contrary to the eternal law."
Topic 33: Fourth Commandment
The fourth commandment, "Honor your father and your mother," has a broader scope than its primary focus: the relationship between children and their...
Topic 37: Eighth Commandment
With the grace of Christ, who is the Truth, Christians can live a life governed by truth.
Topic 40: "Our Father who art in heaven"
"If we pray the Our Father sincerely, we leave individualism behind, because the love that we receive frees us from it. The ‘our’ at the beginning of...