Are we obliged to believe every person who calls himself a Catholic?

"A visible unity in 'claims to be Catholic' is no more remarkable than a unity of 'claims to be Anglican.'" Photo by Sander Sammy on Unsplash Objection: "As long as someone claims to be a Catholic and professes submission to the Church’s magisterium, he cannot be considered to be more than an occult heretic – …

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Membership of the Church: Part IV – Schism & Excommunication

Introduction In the first three parts of this series, we have seen that: The Catholic Church is a perpetually visible society which must therefore consist of members whose identity is discernible by the senses;The sacrament of baptism is necessary and sufficient for constituting an individual as both a subject and a member of the Catholic …

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