Reddit mentions of Theology and Sanity

There are many wonderful resources available in book stores and online if you're interested in learning what the Catholic Church teaches and believes.

Perhaps the two most accessible are, The Catholic Encyclopedia, and The Catechism of the Catholic Church. But, like Reddit, it's easiest to find what you're looking for with Google rather than with the on-site search engine.

For instance, if you want to know what the Catholic Church teaches concerning God, Google "Catechism who is God" (just as an example). The first hit is for the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), Search Results
Catechism of the Catholic Church - I believe in God.

There, in paragraph 213, we read:

>>God is the fullness of Being and of every perfection, without origin and without end. All creatures receive all that they are and have from him; but he alone is his very being, and he is of himself everything that he is.

Turning to Aquinas, we read that:

>>all desired perfections flow from Him as from the first cause

(Aquinas defends this assertion at length, both in this question, as well as in the questions that both precede and come after it.)

You ask:

>is Jesus the sole definition of God or is this just a gross oversimplification of who God really is?

Jesus is the embodiment (or the incarnation, from Latin carnem, singular accusative of carō ‎(“flesh, meat”): compare the Spanish carne, meaning "meat"); as I was saying, Jesus is the embodiment of the Second Person of the Triune God (three persons in one substance).

A person, in its simplest definition is "an individual substance of a rational nature" (see here). When we speak of God being a personal God, this is what we mean. We don't mean that he's a human being (apart from the Son's incarnation, when the Second Person of the Trinity took on human flesh, being made fully God as well as fully man). Angels, too, are persons, as are demons (fallen angels).

(For more on the Trinity I can recommend Frank Sheed's wonderful book Theology and Sanity, also searchable online. See here for example.)

>How is God still "present" among us?

God is present among us primarily through the third person of the Holy Trinity--the Holy Spirit. Jesus said that after his ascension he would send "the comforter" or paraclete (cf. John 16:7-15.

But Jesus (God) is present with us in a particular way in the Sacraments of the Church, and most especially in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, according to which Jesus is made substantially present under the appearance of the bread and the wine. When you go into to a Catholic Church, you'll normally see an ornate box or "ark" behind the main altar. This is the "tabernacle", and in it (usually) are reserved the consecrated host (bread) that has become for us the full body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. This is why we reverence the tabernacle and the altar. When we adore the consecrated host (worship it, with a worship due to God alone) we are worshiping Jesus actually present under the appearance (the accidents) of the bread.

And Jesus/God is present with us through his Church, which, as Paul says, is the body of Christ. We say in the Creed that the Church is holy. It is in this sense, and not with respect to her individual members (me or the priest or anyone else) that we call her Holy.

>How does the Catholic church view salvation? Is it something that ordained priests can grant people via confessions or . . . ?

To be saved is to be in a right-relationship with God. Jesus Christ is the sole means of salvation. If anyone at all is saved, it is through the merits of Christ and not on account of anything that anyone has done themselves with an eye to meriting salvation. And since Christ and his body are one, we say, too, that "there is no salvation outside the Church". (This is one case when you'll need to refer to another web site that reproduces the CCC, http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p123a9p3.htm. I'm not sure why.)

>>Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.^336

336 LG 14; cf. Mk 16:16; Jn 3:5.

This isn't to say that those Christians and others not joined to the Church in visible unity must necessarily despair of salvation, however. Only insofar as they are saved, they are saved through Christ--that is, through the Church. A Muslim or a Buddhist may attain salvation (it isn't impossible) but if they are saved it is only, in a mysterious or invisible way through the Church--that is, through Christ and through Christ's merits. All salvation comes through Christ who said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me." (John 14:6.

Baptism is the way we are visibly joined to the body of Christ.

In the Catechism, under "the necessity of baptism", we read:

>>The Church does not know of any means other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude; this is why she takes care not to neglect the mission she has received from the Lord to see that all who can be baptized are "reborn of water and the Spirit." God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments. [emphasis in original]

And in paragraph 1260 it states:

>>Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery."^63 Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity.

63 GS 22 § 5; cf. LG 16; AG 7.

But, no, priests cannot grant people salvation apart from their ministry of the Sacraments. But here they act, not on their own authority, but in persona Christi, or, in the person of Christ.

Through the ministry of baptism, for instance, priests bring salvation. But anyone may validly baptize--not only a priest--so long as they use the proper form ("I baptize you in the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, and in the name of the Holy Spirit"), the proper matter (water), and so long as they intend what the Church intends (to baptize).

>And by that definition, how do people actually attain salvation?

Once someone is baptized they must "produce fruit in keeping with repentance. That is, they must practice virtue, and chief among the virtues is charity (that is, love*).

>What will God really do to people who aren't saved? Like will He just punish the unrepentant for eternity in Hell with no chance for them to get out or what?

If we Google "catechism life everlasting", we are presented with the Catechism's chapter titled "I believe in life everlasting".

If, after clicking on the link, we search the page for "hell", we read:

>>1033 We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: "He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him."^612 Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren.^613 To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called "hell."

...

>>1035 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."^617 The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.

612 1 Jn 3:14-15.
613 Cf. Mt 25:31-46.
617 Cf. DS 76; 409; 411; 801; 858; 1002; 1351; 1575; Paul VI, CPG § 12.

1. Read the bible - 3-4 chapters a day and you'll finish in about a year. One chapter of the new testament, 2 from the old, and one from the psalms. Skip anything that bogs you down, but keep going.
   
   
2. Read the catechism.
   
   
3. Read the major writings of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II.
   
   
4. For English-language books (which may be available in French), I would like to echo the several prior recommendations for Chesterton. Also consider Ronald Knox's The Belief of Catholics, Frank Sheed's Theology and Sanity, and Peter Kreeft's Catholic Christianity.

To die means to have one's soul separated from their body--it doesn't mean to cease to exist. Christ was both fully human (with a fully human soul) and fully God. When He died, His human soul separated from His body. When He was resurrected, they came back together.

The trinity is a fair bit trickier. The best explanation I've ever read is in this book. I'll just point out that this is a question over which philosophers and theologians throughout the ages have toiled, and it is beyond the powers of the mind to completely grasp, much like the idea of infinity or eternity. That doesn't mean we can't know anything about it--the book I linked does a pretty good job.

For a protestant seeking conversion, these two will be particularly useful:

1. Rome Sweet Home by Scott and Kimberly Hahn
   
   
2. Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic by David Currie
   
   They're not heavily theological in nature, but very interpersonal.
   
   Theology:
   
   
3. Theology for Beginners
   
   
4. Theology and Sanity
   
   Both great reads.

I think the Catechism of the Catholic Church is a rich resource for these sorts of doctrinal questions. You can see that here.

Also, Frank Sheed's Theology and Sanity has one of the best explanations I've ever read.