Catholicism: A Primer for Non-Catholics

di David Tuffley (Autore)

David Tuffley, 2026

Roughly 1.4 billion people, about one in six on earth, belong to the Catholic Church. Yet most outsiders know it only in fragments: a wedding, a funeral, a news report from Rome, a half-remembered argument about purgatory. Even many who grew up Catholic would struggle to explain why the Church believes bread becomes the Body of Christ, why it prays for the dead, or what a bishop actually does. Catholicism: A Primer for Non-Catholics answers those questions plainly. It is for readers who want to understand the faith before deciding what they think of it, and it neither preaches nor attacks. It explains what the Church teaches, where those teachings came from, and how they shape the lives of ordinary Catholics. The book begins with the Trinity, a word that never appears in the Bible, and traces the doctrine to the councils of Nicaea and Constantinople in the fourth century. It explains how a single phrase added to the Creed helped divide Eastern and Western Christianity in 1054. Then it turns to the question that split the Western Church five centuries later: where does religious authority come from? Readers learn why a Catholic Bible has seven more books than a Protestant one, why Catholics place Tradition alongside Scripture where the Reformers insisted on Scripture alone, and why papal infallibility is far narrower than most people assume. It has been formally invoked only once since it was defined in 1870. The heart of the book is its account of the seven sacraments, told as a visitor would experience it. Readers see the water poured three times at a baptism and the chrism traced on the forehead at Confirmation. They hear the words that open a confession and learn why a priest who reveals what he has heard is automatically excommunicated. They discover why, in a Catholic wedding, the bride and groom rather than the priest confer the sacrament, why a Catholic marrying outside the faith needs the Church's permission, and why the sacrament once known as Extreme Unction is no longer reserved for the dying. Later chapters describe how the Church is organised, from the parish to the Sistine Chapel conclave that elected Leo XIV, the first American pope, in 2025. They set out the moral teaching that flows from the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes, the virtues of faith, hope and charity, the Church's conviction that every human life carries an unearned dignity, and its social teaching on justice, peace and the poor. The section on prayer covers the Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours, the Rosary and the Stations of the Cross. A practical note for visitors explains what to do at Mass and why Communion is reserved for Catholics. The final part takes up the questions most people only half remember from childhood. What happens at death? What is purgatory? What does the Church really teach about heaven and hell? Throughout, the book notes where Catholics and Protestants agree and where they part company. It suits a curious agnostic, a Protestant marrying into a Catholic family, a student of religion or a lapsed Catholic. The chapters are short, the language is clear, and no prior knowledge is assumed. Whatever your beliefs, you will finish it seeing the Catholic Church as it understands itself, not as others imagine it.

• Autore: David Tuffley
• Anno edizione: 2026
• Editore: David Tuffley
• Formato: EPUB2 con DRMFREE
• Lingua: Inglese
• Compatibilità: Tutti i dispositivi (eccetto Kindle)
• Layout: Reflowable
• EAN: 9798237957693