The New Gospel

… we … teach and define as dogma divinely revealed: That the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra [out of his office] … through the divine assistance promised him in blessed Peter, is endowed with that infallibility, with which the Divine Redeemer has willed that His Church … should be equipped … If any one shall presume (which God forbid!) to contradict this our definition; let him be anathema [cursed and condemned to Hell].

The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living, teaching office of the Church alone.

The words bind and loose mean:  whomever you exclude from your communion, will be excluded from communion with God; whomever you receive anew into your communion, God will welcome back into his.  Reconciliation with the Church is inseparable from reconciliation with God.  

An indulgence is obtained through the Church who, by virtue of the power of binding and loosing granted her by Christ Jesus [Matthew (16:19; 18:18)], intervenes in favor of individual Christians [alive or now in Purgatory] and opens for them the treasure of merits of Christ and the saints obtain from the Father of mercies the remission of the temporal punishments due to their sins.

The Pope, Bishop of Rome and Peter’s successor, is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful.  For the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the entire Church has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered. 

Death puts an end to human life as the time open to either accepting or rejecting the divine grace manifest in Christ … Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of heaven — through a purification or immediately — or immediate and everlasting damnation.  

The Church teaches that Satan [the devil] was at first a good angel, made by God:  The devil and other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing. 

Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity.

Parents should initiate their children at an early age into the mysteries of the faith of which they are the “first heralds” for their children.  They should associate them from their tenderest years with the life of the Church … As far as possible parents have the duty of choosing schools that will best help them in their task as Christian educators.

Faith is certain.  It is more certain than all human knowledge, because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie.  To be sure, revealed truths can seem to obscure human reason and experience, but the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives.  Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.

Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason.  Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth.

Without the knowledge Revelation gives of God we cannot recognize sin clearly and are tempted to explain it as merely a developmental flaw, a psychological weakness, a mistake, or the necessary consequence of an inadequate social structure, etc.

Imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, inordinate attachments and other psychological and social factors.  

Previously God, who has neither a body nor a face, absolutely could not be represented by an image.  But now that he has made himself visible in the flesh and has lived with men, I can make an image of what I have seen of God … and contemplate the glory of the Lord, his face unveiled.  

These books the church holds to be sacred and canonical not because she subsequently approved them by her authority after they had been composed by unaided human skill, nor simply because they contain revelation without error, but because, being written under the inspiration of the holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and were as such committed to the church.

The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity.  Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, “eternal fire.”

Previously God, who has neither a body nor a face, absolutely could not be represented by an image.  But now that he has made himself visible in the flesh and has lived with men, I can make an image of what I have seen of God … and contemplate the glory of the Lord, his face unveiled.  

Born with a fallen nature and tainted by original [inherited] sin, children also have need of the new birth of Baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God, to which all men are called.

The Catholic Church continues to believe in the virtuous priority of virginity.  Not only must clergy be celibate, but “marriage is a reality of this present age which is passing away [under the in-breaking kingdom of God]” 

Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”  They are contrary to the natural law … Under no circumstances can they be approved … Homosexual persons [recognized as a reality by the Church are therefore] called to chastity.

Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality.  These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of authentic freedom.  In contrast, “every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible” is intrinsically evil. 

Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus) are gravely immoral … Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination and fertilization) are perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable.

Divorce does injury to the covenant of salvation, of which sacramental marriage is the sign.  Contracting a new union, even if it is recognized by civil law, adds to the gravity of the rupture; the remarried spouse [and the person who marries him] is in a situation of public and permanent adultery.  

Atheism must be regarded as one of the most serious problems of our time … Atheistic humanism falsely considers man to be “an end to himself, and the sole maker, with supreme control, of his own history.”